ISRAEL AT WAR – DAY 564
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The Times of Israel is liveblogging Tuesday’s events as they unfold.
The Qatari newspaper Al-Araby Al-Jadeed reports that an Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo on Sunday evening to hold talks with mediators and seek a breakthrough in the negotiations with Hamas for a ceasefire and the release of hostages from Gaza.
According to the report, the delegation met yesterday with senior Egyptian officials.
Last week, Hamas rejected an Israeli ceasefire proposal that was conveyed to them but stated it is willing to discuss a broader deal that includes ending the war.
Mediators Qatar and Egypt have reportedly proposed an outline for a ceasefire of between five and seven years, a formal end to the war, a complete IDF pullout from Gaza, and the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian security prisoners.
Gaza’s Hamas-controlled civil defense agency claims seven people were killed in fresh Israeli airstrikes across the territory.
“The occupation launched violent airstrikes on Gaza City and the towns of Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and Khan Younis, killing seven civilians,” civil defense spokesman Mahmoud Bassal tells AFP. Hamas’s casualty figures consistently conflate civilians with terror operatives.
Four people are killed in the Al-Rimal area near Gaza City, two in Al-Sabra west of Gaza City and one in Khan Younis, he asserts.
“The occupation also destroyed more than 10 homes east of Gaza City and in Rafah,” he adds.
Egypt and Qatar, the mediators in the Israel-Hamas negotiations for a ceasefire and hostage deal, have made a new proposal for a yearslong truce and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza alongside a hostages-for-prisoners swap, the BBC cites a senior Palestinian official familiar with the talks as saying.
The reported offer includes a ceasefire of between five and seven years, a formal end to the war, a complete IDF pullout from Gaza, and the release of “all Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.”
The report doesn’t say whether the remaining non-Israeli hostages — two who are believed alive, a Thai and a Nepalese, and the bodies of two Thais and a Tanzanian — would also be freed.
The Palestinian source is cited as saying that Hamas has expressed willingness to cede control of the Strip to any agreed Palestinian entity, whether the Palestinian Authority or a newly formed administrative body. The official says the mediation effort is serious and that the terror group has shown “unprecedented flexibility.”
The British broadcaster says Israel hasn’t commented on the plan, and that a senior Hamas delegation will head to Cairo for consultations.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich criticizes the current prosecution of the war in Gaza, saying that if the fighting isn’t escalated, the current government “has no justification for its existence.”
Speaking on the right-wing Channel 14, Smotrich says that when the ceasefire was signed in January, “I said unequivocally that we would return to fighting in a completely different way: aiming to subdue, to defeat, to destroy Hamas, to conquer the Gaza Strip and impose military rule on it, to take territory and signal internally and externally that anyone who messes with us is demolished.”
“But unfortunately, this isn’t what is happening,” he adds. “I think it’s time to charge at Gaza. If that doesn’t happen, this government has no justification for its existence.”
Commenting on the outrage he caused earlier by saying that while important, returning the hostages is “not the most important thing,” Smotrich accuses his critics of trying to “silence and shut up an opinion that is the most justified and correct.”
Harvard University sues US President Donald Trump’s administration in an effort to halt the government’s pause of more than $2 billion in funding for the US educational institution.
“Over the course of the past week, the federal government has taken several actions following Harvard’s refusal to comply with its illegal demands,” Harvard President Alan Garber says in a statement.
“Moments ago, we filed a lawsuit to halt the funding freeze because it is unlawful and beyond the government’s authority,” Garber says.
Among the US government agencies mentioned in Harvard’s lawsuit are the Education Department, the Health Department, the Justice Department, the Energy Department and the General Services Administration.
The Trump administration has no immediate comment.
Trump and his White House team have publicly justified their campaign against universities as a reaction to what they say is uncontrolled antisemitism and a need to reverse diversity programs aimed at addressing historical oppression of minorities.
The administration claims protests against the war in Gaza that swept across US college campuses last year were rife with antisemitism and pro-Hamas ideology.
Other institutions, including Columbia University, have bowed to less far-ranging demands from the Trump administration, which claims that the educational elite is too left-wing.
Security spending has surged at many US Jewish schools since Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel, a study says.
Teach Coalition, a division of the Orthodox Union that operates in seven US states, compares spending at some of its member schools in the 2024-2025 school year to the 2022-2023 school year.
Average spending went from $184,228 per school to $339,297 per school, an 84% increase, the study finds. Per-pupil costs went from $445 to $807.
In New York, security spending doubled. The average New York school has spent $569,789 on security since the October 7 onslaught, an increase of 99%. Per-pupil spending increased 102%.
The top spending category is for security guards, accounting for 69% of security costs, followed by property improvements such as doors, and equipment such as radios and cameras.
Security has gone up from 1.85% of the schools’ total budget to 3.09%. Security costs increased at close to 10 times the rate of other costs, the survey says.
Smaller schools spend less in total on security, but have higher per-pupil expenses. Schools with fewer than 100 students have spent an average of $1,735 per student since October 7.
The researchers collated data provided by 63 schools in February and March. Most of the schools are in Florida and New York, while others are in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The schools range in size and enroll a total of 26,473 students, representing 10% of the total Jewish school enrollment in those states.
The responding schools are all among the members of the Orthodox Union’s Teach Coalition, meaning they are likely not representative of the US Jewish school system as a whole.
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Mediators said to float 5-7-year truce, IDF pullout from Gaza, hostages-for-prisoners swap – The Times of Israel
