Palestinian Authority appeals for indefinite truce in Gaza

The Palestinian foreign minister has appealed for an indefinite truce in the war between Israel and Hamas. “We have to count the dead. We have to protect the innocent. Seventy per cent of the dead in Gaza are women and children and this can’t go on,” foreign affairs minister of the Palestinian National Authority Riyad al-Maliki told reporters. “We have to work to extend the ceasefire so that it is permanent.”

Under a four-day truce agreement that began on Friday, Hamas agreed to release people kidnapped in its deadly October 7th assault on Israeli border communities, while Israel agreed to release prisoners.

Before last-minute negotiations appeared to have secured a two-day extension to the truce, ministers from Europe, the Middle East and North Africa gathered to discuss the conflict at a meeting of the Union for the Mediterranean in Barcelona, Spain.

Israel did not attend the conference, while Palestine was represented by the Palestinian Authority, the more moderate rival to Hamas that rules in the West Bank. Though ministers were hopeful the truce could be extended by additional days, there were also fears that sooner or later the bombardment by Israel and firing of rockets by Hamas would resume.

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Mr al-Maliki warned that any bombing would now be more deadly as the civilian population of Gaza has clustered in a smaller area in the south of the strip, where they were ordered to go after being told to evacuate the north of the strip.

“The truce came about when there were 15,000 victims. If the war goes on tomorrow this means the number will double because of the concentration of the Palestinian population,” he said. “Any Israeli attack that would have killed one child will now kill two.”

The dozens of countries that attended the summit agreed that international law must be respected, that adequate humanitarian aid must enter Gaza, and that its population should not be driven out of the territory.

“We agreed that there should be no more killing. So call it a humanitarian pause, call it a ceasefire, call it whatever you want to call it, as long as the killing stops,” Jordan’s deputy prime minister and minister of foreign affairs Ayman Al-Safadi said.

He warned that the conflict was doing deep damage to the prospects of a peaceful resolution, and that progress needed to be made swiftly to bring about a two-state solution, which he described as the only way to guarantee Israel’s security. “We in the Arab world, in the Muslim world, have unequivocally condemned the killing of Israeli civilians on October 7th. But as deep as the pain is, as blinding as the outrage is, they cannot make the killing of 15,000 Palestinians, over 6,000 of them children, acceptable,” Mr Al-Safadi said.

The European Union’s foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell described the death toll in Gaza as “disproportionate”, and said that “most of the public opinion around the world” considered it unacceptable. “Gaza is more or less like Barcelona, 2.5 million people. Just imagine half of the city being turned into rubble.”