GAZA: A Hamas official said Zionist troops completed their withdrawal on Sunday from a strategic road cutting through the Gaza Strip, part of a fragile truce deal. But diplomatic tensions were high after Zionist Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appeared to suggest in an interview that a Palestinian state could be established on Saudi territory, drawing the ire of Saudi Arabia and other Arab nations. Netanyahu has also hailed US President Donald Trump’s widely criticized plan to move Palestinians out of the war-battered Gaza Strip, saying the Zionist entity is willing to “do the job”.

As negotiations are set to begin on the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire, which is intended to pave

the way for a permanent end to the war, Palestinians on Sunday were able to cross the Netzarim Corridor, where a Zionist checkpoint used to stand. An official from the Hamas-run interior ministry said “(Zionist) forces have dismantled their positions... and completely withdrawn their tanks from the Netzarim Corridor on Salaheddin Road, allowing vehicles to pass freely in both directions.”

AFP journalists saw no troops in the area as cars, buses, pickup trucks and donkey carts traveled along the road from both the north and south. Gaza resident Mahmoud Al-Sarhi told AFP that for him, “arriving at the Netzarim Corridor meant death until this morning”. This is “the first time I saw our destroyed house,” he said of his home in the nearby Zeitun area. “The entire area is in ruins. I cannot live here.”

Gaza’s civil defense agency said Zionist forces shot dead three civilians Sunday, as the military said it fired “warning shots” and hit Palestinians who had approached troops in the territory. Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s civil defense agency, said there were “three martyrs and several injured as a result of (Zionist) occupation forces opening fire on civilians in the eastern areas of Gaza City”. He urged residents to avoid the eastern areas and Zionist military positions, emphasizing the importance of following official directives.

According to a senior Hamas official, the Zionist withdrawal from Netzarim had been scheduled for Sunday under the terms of a truce that took effect on Jan 19. Under the terms of the ceasefire, the Zionist entity and Hamas completed on Saturday their fifth round of captive-prisoner exchange, with three Zionist captives and 183 Palestinian prisoners released.

Of the prisoners freed from Zionist jails, the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group said seven required hospitalization, decrying “brutality” and mistreatment in jail. Halfway around the world, in Bangkok, five Thai farm workers held by Hamas and freed in an earlier swap wept with joy as they returned home on Sunday. “You are back, I thought you were dead,” the grandfather of 33-year-old Watchara Sriaoun told him.

Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim on Saturday warned that the Zionist entity’s “lack of commitment in implementing the first phase... exposes this agreement to danger and thus it may stop or collapse”. Earlier this week, Trump sparked global outrage by suggesting the United States should take control of the Gaza Strip and clear out its inhabitants. The Zionist defense minister this week ordered the army to prepare for “voluntary” departures from Gaza.

Trump has ruled out sending American troops to the territory, and in an interview with Fox News aired on Saturday, Netanyahu said the Zionist entity was willing to “do the job”. “I think that President Trump’s proposal is the first fresh idea in years, and it has the potential to change everything in Gaza,” Netanyahu said, adding that it represents a “correct approach” to the future of the Palestinian territory. “All Trump is saying, ‘I want to open the gate and give them an option to relocate temporarily while we rebuild the place physically’,” Netanyahu said. Trump “never said he wants American troops to do the job. Guess what? We’ll do the job,” Netanyahu declared.

Netanyahu said Trump’s plan was a departure from the “same old, same old, same old — we leave, Gaza becomes again occupied by these terrorists who use it as a base to attack (the Zionist entity)... It doesn’t go anywhere”. “I think we should pursue it,” he added, cautioning that “the real issue” was finding a country that would agree to take in displaced Gazans. The Zionist leader also said that relocated Palestinians would have to “disavow terrorism” to be allowed to return to Gaza.

“Everybody describes Gaza as the biggest open-air prison in the world,” Netanyahu said. “Get the population out, allow them to leave. Not forcible eviction, not ethnic cleansing — getting people out of what all these countries and all these do-gooders say is an open-air prison. Why are you keeping them in prison?” – Agencies