Israel's far-right minister doubles his efforts against ceasefire in Gaza

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A right-wing extremist Israeli minister on Wednesday increased pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to break off negotiations on a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip aimed at the release of the hostages.

National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir called for an end to indirect talks with Hamas, which Israel accuses of executing six hostages whose bodies were found in a Gaza tunnel last week.

“A country whose six hostages were murdered in cold blood does not negotiate with the murderers, but ends the talks, stops the supply of fuel and electricity and suppresses them until they collapse,” Ben Gvir wrote on the social media platform X.

Ben Gvir and far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich are key members of Netanyahu's coalition government. They strongly oppose ceasefire talks and insist that continuing the war in Gaza is the only way to destroy Hamas.

Indirect talks between Israel and Hamas have been taking place for months through the mediators USA, Egypt and Qatar, but so far there has been no breakthrough.

The United States said on Tuesday that it was time to “finalize” a deal to end the war that would include the release of the hostages in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails.

Washington will work with other mediators “in the coming days” “to advance a final agreement,” said US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.

“It’s time to get this deal done,” Miller said.

But Netanyahu refused to make any “concessions” in these negotiations, even as domestic and international pressure increased following the recovery of the six dead hostages.

A key sticking point was Netanyahu's insistence that Israeli troops should remain on the border between Gaza and Egypt, known as the Philadelphia Corridor.

But Miller said on Tuesday that Israel had agreed to withdraw troops from the border area.

“The bridging proposal we put forward, which the Israeli government agreed to, called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from densely populated areas. This includes the Philadelphia Corridor,” Miller said, referring to the Israeli forces.

“We are against the long-term presence of IDF troops in Gaza,” he said.

Hamas insisted that any agreement would require a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza.

During the attack on Israel on October 7, Palestinian militants took 251 hostages, 97 of whom are still being held in Gaza. Thirty-three of them are dead, according to the Israeli military.

According to official Israeli figures, 1,205 people were killed in the attack itself, most of them civilians, including some hostages killed during the hostage-taking.

According to the Health Ministry of the Hamas-controlled Gaza area, at least 40,819 people have been killed in Israel's military retaliation offensive.

According to the UN Office for Human Rights, most of the dead are women and children.

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