US says Hamas-Israel ceasefire deal is ‘90% agreed’

September 5 (EUROPA PRESS) –

The US administration said on Wednesday that the ceasefire and hostage release agreement between Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) is “90 percent agreed upon,” and is based primarily on the entry of humanitarian aid, an exchange of prisoners and the gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.

“Those are basically the three components of the agreement. The agreement has 18 paragraphs in total. Fourteen of those paragraphs are finalized and, I must say, they are identical. (…) One paragraph is a very technical arrangement, and the other three have to do with the exchange of prisoners for hostages, (…) so basically 90 percent of this agreement has been agreed upon, and it has been agreed upon on terms that even Hamas had in its own proposal,” said a senior US official during a conference call with reporters.

After this, he proceeded to explain the three phases of the ceasefire: the first consists of 42 extendable days during which the conditions of the second phase will be established, which must maintain the conditions previously signed.

“So as soon as this agreement starts, the war will stop completely. The mediators are committed to supporting indirect talks to get to the second phase. And phase two is a permanent ceasefire and a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces,” he said.

Based on this, he explained that during the first phase there will not be a total withdrawal of the Israeli Army, only from “densely populated areas”, and he stressed that a map has already been drawn up in this regard and that it includes the Wadi corridor, in the north of the Palestinian enclave.

Although State Department spokesman Matthew Miller had said the day before that the agreement included withdrawal from the Philadelphia corridor, something the Israeli government has rejected, the official now reported that “nothing in the agreement” mentions such a step.

“Nothing in the agreement mentions the Philadelphia corridor. What the agreement says is that they are withdrawing from all densely populated areas. And a dispute arose over whether the Philadelphia corridor, which is effectively a highway on the border between Gaza and Egypt, is a densely populated area. So, based on that dispute, the Israelis, over the course of the last two weeks, put forward a proposal whereby they would significantly reduce their presence in the corridor, quite a significant reduction,” he added.

Finally, he said that it must be “taken into account” that there are now fewer hostages to be freed after “six of them were executed” in a tunnel in the Strip, an incident for which Israel blames Hamas but which the Palestinian group attributes to the bombings.

“While we were negotiating a list of hostages last week, we now have fewer because six of them were executed. And I think that is something we must take into account and that is why we have always focused on Hamas accountability. (…) The execution of hostages that we were negotiating to release in a tunnel under Rafah is totally outrageous,” he said.