Calls have mounted for the extension of a four-day truce in the Gaza Strip that saw a halt in the Israeli genocidal war and a swap of Palestinians incarcerated in Israeli jails and captives held by the resistance group.
The ceasefire, which took effect on Friday, expires on Monday, allowed the delivery of humanitarian aid to Gaza that has been subjected to a brutal Israeli aggression over the past few weeks.
Thus far, 39 Israeli captives and 117 Palestinian prisoners have been released as part of the deal mediated by Qatar and Egypt.
The figure does not include an Israeli-Russian man and 19 foreign nationals freed from Gaza separately from the deal.
A senior leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad resistance movement said that the proposal to prolong the humanitarian truce is still under “evaluation” by his group.
In an interview with Qatar-based Al Jazeera television network, Daoud Shehab said the Islamic Jihad is “committed to the interests of the Palestinian people more than anything else,” adding that there should be clear guarantees to prevent Israeli acts of aggression against Gaza.
The resistance group, he added, is seeking to stop the war as well as the displacement of more Palestinians and will not allow Israel to impose its will on the people in Gaza.
In a statement released on Sunday, Hamas said it wants “to extend the truce after the four-day period ends, through serious efforts to increase the number of those released from imprisonment as stipulated in the humanitarian ceasefire agreement.”
Meanwhile, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told The Financial Times that Hamas needs to locate dozens more Israeli captives to prolong the truce.
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the pause could be “extended for another day, or two days, or three days or even more.”
“The ball is in Hamas’s court on that because what Israel has said is that it is prepared to pause another day of fighting for every 10 hostages that Hamas releases,” he told ABC News, claiming that the resistance group bears responsibility if the pause stops.
After a telephone conversation with US President Joe Biden, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed in a video statement that he had expressed his openness to extending the Gaza truce.
However, Netanyahu warned that once the ceasefire is over, the Israeli military’s ground operation will return in full force.
Israel waged the war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas conducted Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
Since the start of the aggression, the Tel Aviv regime has killed nearly 15,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and left vast swathes of the coastal enclave in ruins.
It has also imposed a “complete siege” on the territory, cutting off fuel, electricity, food and water to the more than two million Palestinians living there.
