Pressure piles on Israel over truce

The international community should pressure Israel for a ceasefire proposal it has yet to respond to, a Qatari official said as he accused Tel Aviv of not wanting to reach an agreement but advance attacks in Gaza and allow famine to spread.

Adviser to the Qatari Prime Minister and Official Spokesperson for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Majed bin Mohammed Al-Ansari urged international parties to exert pressure on Israel to respond to the mediation proposal for a ceasefire, as it had already been about 10 days.

At a news briefing on Tuesday, he said "the ball is now in the Israeli court, which does not want to reach an agreement".

A Saudi Council of Ministers' meeting on Tuesday, chaired by King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, reiterated Saudi Arabia's call to the international community, especially all United Nations Security Council members, to urgently intervene to end the famine in Gaza and halt the genocide and crimes committed by the Israeli occupation forces.

The Arab appeals came amid major demonstrations held across Israel, demanding that the government sign a deal to bring the hostages home and end the conflict in Gaza.

The President of the United Nations General Assembly Philemon Yang strongly condemned Israel's strikes on Gaza's Nasser Hospital, his spokeswoman Sharon Birch said on Tuesday.

Elsewhere, over 200 former EU ambassadors, senior diplomatic staff and ambassadors from EU member states published an open letter, calling for urgent action over Israel's fighting in Gaza and unlawful actions in the West Bank, The Guardian reported.

If the EU does not act collectively, they said, the member states must take steps individually or in smaller groups to support human rights and uphold international law.

Military plans discussed

Meanwhile, the Israeli security cabinet met in Jerusalem to approve the military's plans to take control of Gaza City, with local reports saying the forum did not discuss the ceasefire proposal.

Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said that high-level hostage-ceasefire deal mediators called him to ask if he had any knowledge of why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had not yet responded to the latest proposal for a ceasefire agreement, the Times of Israel reported on Wednesday.

"I spoke with mediators at the highest level in the negotiations, and they said 'we don't understand what happened, Hamas accepted the conditions that Netanyahu set,'" Lapid was quoted as saying by the report, which cited Army Radio.

US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff said in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday that President Donald Trump would chair a meeting on Gaza at the White House on Wednesday and added that Washington expected the conflict to be resolved by the end of the year.

Witkoff also said on Tuesday that the US administration's official position is to oppose additional partial Gaza hostage deals. At least 20 hostages are believed to be alive. The Israeli authorities have confirmed the deaths of 28 others.

Other parts of the world saw continued condemnation of Israeli hospital strikes that killed rescue workers and five more journalists in southern Gaza on Tuesday. Hamas rejected accusations that Israel's targets were militants.

Israel had said it had killed six militants in the attack at Nasser Hospital. The Hamas media office said in a statement that one of the six Palestinians that Israel claimed as a militant was killed in al-Mawasi, some distance from the hospital, and another was killed elsewhere at a different time, Reuters reported.

Dina Yulianti Sulaeman, director of the Indonesia Center for Middle East Studies, told China Daily that Israel's silence over Hamas accepting a ceasefire deal last week "demonstrates an imbalance in the negotiation process".

"Arab mediators have put proposals on the table, and even the Israeli public is urging its government to take steps toward an agreement. However, the Israeli regime continues to stubbornly maintain its desire to carry out military operations and occupy Gaza," said Sulaeman.

This is precisely where international pressure is crucial.

"Regarding predictions about a resolution to the war, both Trump's claims and the US envoy's statements reflect America's domestic political calculations rather than the reality on the ground," Sulaeman said.