Gaza ceasefire to begin at 8:30am on Sunday (06:30 GMT): Qatar
Qatar’s Foreign Ministry spokesman has announced the Gaza ceasefire will start on Sunday at 8:30am local time in Gaza (06:30 GMT).
“We advise our brethren to remain cautious, exercise the utmost care and wait for instructions from official sources,” spokesperson Majed al-Ansari wrote in a post on X in Arabic.
Israel likely to keep bombing Gaza ‘until the last minute’
With less than 24 hours until a ceasefire takes effect in Gaza, Palestinians are finally eyeing a respite from the relentless bombardment that has devastated their homeland.
But Israel’s military is likely to keep up their attacks “until the last minute”, says Hassan Barari, professor of international affairs at Qatar University. “We’ve seen this before,” he told Al Jazeera. “There’s a part of the Israeli government that wants to punish the Palestinians.”
Once the ceasefire starts on Sunday, however, Barari expects it to go smoothly, at least for the first week.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Barari said, would not want to immediately jeopardise the ceasefire and “spoil the moment’ for US President-elect Donald Trump, who has taken credit for the deal and assumes office on Monday.
Biden’s remarks show ‘complicity’ in Israel’s ‘indiscriminate’ bombardment
Earlier, we shared remarks from outgoing US President Joe Biden’s interview with MSNBC, where he revealed that he had pleaded with Netanyahu not to carpet-bomb civilian areas in Gaza at the start of the war.
However, Biden also mentioned that Netanyahu made what he considered a “legitimate argument” for Israel’s violent campaign, telling him, “‘Look, these are the guys who killed my people’.”
According to analyst Hassan Barari, Biden’s comments seem to acknowledge Israel’s indiscriminate use of US weapons in Gaza.
“It signals that Biden himself was complicit in what the Israelis were doing, including killing people in an indiscriminate way,” Barari told Al Jazeera. “He knew this very well … He continued providing them [Israel] with the means to do that.
“By saying this, he [Biden] undermined the very basics of the international order that the Americans have championed since 1945,” said Barari.
“This sends a very clear message to the world that the Americans actually have double standards: on the one hand, they criticise what Putin is doing in Ukraine, but at the same time, they overlook whatever Netanyahu is doing [in Gaza].”
Hamas claims Palestinians closer to ‘liberation’, Israel ‘failed to achieve goals’
The Palestinian group has released a statement, claiming to have “shattered” Israel’s “arrogance” during the 15-month war in Gaza.
Ahead of an agreed-upon ceasefire set to begin tomorrow, Hamas claimed it had “forced the occupation to stop the aggression against our people and withdraw, despite Netanyahu’s attempts to prolong the war and commit more massacres”.
“The occupation failed to achieve its aggressive goals, and only succeeded in committing war crimes that shame humanity,” said Hamas, adding that Palestinians are now “closer to the end of the occupation, liberation, and return”.
“The sacrifices of our people in the genocidal war will not go in vain, won’t be forgotten,” said the group.
Islamic Jihad says Israeli attacks before ceasefire could kill captives
The spokesperson of al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, says the group is making the final arrangements for the release of captives but intensified Israeli bombing risks killing them.
In a statement on Telegram, Abu Hamza called on the families of captives to demand the Israeli military stop the heavy bombardment before the start of the ceasefire.
“[The attacks] would be a reason for killing their children,” the statement added.
In addition to Hamas, the group is believed to hold Israeli captives.
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