Turkey imposes trade restrictions on Israel until a ceasefire is reached in Gaza

2024-04-09 19:20:13, Kosova & Bota CNA

Turkey said on Tuesday it is imposing trade restrictions on Israel affecting a range of products until Israel declares a cease-fire in Gaza.

The restrictions include 54 items such as iron, steel, cement, jet fuel and chemical fertilizers.

The restrictions were imposed a day after Israel blocked a Turkish request to send aid to Gaza. Many countries have airdropped aid in an effort to overcome what humanitarian organizations say is the inability to send aid by land.

Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz vowed to respond with parallel measures against Turkey, adding that Israel will not, however, respond to "violence and extortion".

Minister Katz wrote on the X social network that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is sacrificing "the economic interest of the Turkish people for the sake of his support for the killers of Hamas in Gaza."

After cease-fire talks in Cairo involving officials from the United States, Israel, Hamas and Qatar, the Palestinian militant group said it was considering the latest proposal to halt fighting accompanied by the release of hostages being held in Gaza.

The proposal suggests reaching a six-week ceasefire, releasing some of the hostages being held in Gaza, freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israel, increasing humanitarian aid to Gaza and returning displaced Palestinians to the northern part of the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo.

"We are constantly working to achieve our goals, first and foremost the release of all hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas," Prime Minister Netanyahu said. "This victory requires entering the city of Rafah and eliminating the terrorist battalions there. This will happen. We have set the date for the intervention", he said.

Washington immediately criticized the Israeli Prime Minister. A spokeswoman for the Pentagon said that Washington "has been very clear that it does not support the operations in Rafah".

"We want to see a credible plan for how they're going to conduct operations there," given the "fundamental" humanitarian concerns for the more than one million Palestinian civilians sheltered there, the Pentagon's deputy press secretary said. , Sabrina Singh. "We still haven't seen their official plan."

The White House described the negotiations as "serious".

"Hamas has received a proposal and we await Hamas' response," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters. "Now it will be up to Hamas to do what needs to be done."

Mr Kirby declined to discuss the details of the proposed deal, adding that "this would be one of the surest ways to destroy it".

The resumption of negotiations for a ceasefire and the release of hostages came days after President Joe Biden warned Prime Minister Netanyahu of the possibility of a change in US support for the Israeli offensive.

President Biden demanded that Israel immediately allow more humanitarian aid into the war zone to help starving Palestinians and lend support to Israeli negotiators to reach an immediate ceasefire.

Mr Biden's demands came after an Israeli airstrike killed seven international aid workers trying to deliver food to Gaza.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin conveyed the same message in a phone call Monday with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, the Pentagon said.

Secretary Austin discussed the need to "dramatically increase humanitarian aid to Gaza" as well as the investigation into the attack by the Israeli army that killed the workers of the humanitarian organization "World Central Kitchen".

"Minister Gallant provided details on the withdrawal of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) from parts of Gaza and the future of Israel's offensive against Hamas," Pentagon spokesman General Pat Ryder said. "Secretary Austin expressed his commitment to support the unconditional release of all hostages and expressed his hope that negotiations will lead to a temporary halt to the fighting."

National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said on Sunday that “more than 300 trucks [with humanitarian aid] entered Gaza and that is progress. We obviously need to see this number continue to increase in order to really address the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza."

Israeli officials will also visit the White House in the coming days to hear US concerns over a possible Israeli offensive in Rafah.

"We do not support a major ground operation in Rafah," Mr Kirby said. "We also see no sign that such a major ground operation is imminent, or that these troops [moved from Khan Younis town] are being repositioned for that kind of ground operation."

Hamas is believed to still be holding around 100 hostages in Gaza, of the 250 or so it captured during the October 7 terror attack in Israel, which killed 1,200 people.

By mid-February, 112 hostages had been freed, most during a ceasefire in November, while another 36 are believed to have died or been killed in Gaza during six months of fighting.

Gaza's Health Ministry, run by Hamas, says more than 33,000 people, two-thirds of them women and children, have been killed as a result of Israel's attack. These data have not been confirmed by independent sources. The Israeli military says the total includes thousands of militants who have been killed during their operation.

Some information for this report was provided by news agencies Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse./ VOA