Tel Aviv, Israel:

Israel’s prime minister, under pressure at home and from abroad to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas, on Sunday accused the Hamas operatives of obstinance in Gaza truce talks as top US diplomat Antony Blinken landed in Israel.

Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began when Hamas attacked Israel in October, the US secretary of state is to meet Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in a renewed bid to seal a deal that could help avert a wider conflagration.

Blinken is later set to travel on Tuesday to Cairo, where ceasefire talks will resume in the coming days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated that it is Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that must be pressured.

“Hamas, up to this moment, remains obstinate. It did not even send a representative to the talks in Doha. Therefore, the pressure should be directed at Hamas and (Yahya) Sinwar, not at the Israeli government,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting, referring to the Hamas chief.

Western ally Jordan, hostage supporters protesting in Israel, and Hamas itself have called for pressure on Netanyahu in order that an agreement be reached.

Far-right members crucial to his governing coalition oppose any truce.

Ahead of Blinken’s visit, the foreign ministers of Britain and France were on Friday also in Israel to stress the urgency of a Gaza deal.

In late May, US President Joe Biden laid out a framework which he said was proposed by Israel. The UN Security Council later endorsed the proposal, which would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks as Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters the besieged Gaza Strip.

Ahead of the truce talks in Doha last Thursday and Friday, Hamas called on mediators to implement the Biden framework rather than holding more negotiations.

Hamas also announced its opposition to what it called “new conditions” from Israel.

On Saturday, Netanyahu’s office in a statement said Israeli negotiators have expressed “cautious optimism” about reaching a Gaza truce deal.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have also reported progress and a US official said remaining gaps were “bridgeable”.

But after Biden said “we are closer than we have ever been” to a deal, Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed as “an illusion” such optimistic talk.

Previous announcements that a deal was close during the months of on-off truce negotiations proved unfounded.

But the stakes have risen since the late July killings in quick succession of Iran-backed militant leaders, including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, deepened with a feared polio outbreak.

Israeli evacuation orders have “reduced the safe zone” in the south of the territory, leaving “no more space” for displaced Palestinians, said Samah Dib, 32.

Some people “are sleeping on the street” while clean water is scarce and “there’s food at the markets, but it’s very expensive and we have no money left”, said Dib, who like almost all Gazans is among the displaced.

As efforts towards a long-sought truce continued, so has the violence in Gaza but also in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hamas’s Iran-backed ally Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire throughout the war. They did so again on Sunday.

The rumble of tanks

Civil defence rescuers in Hamas-run Gaza reported seven killed in Israeli bombardment of Deir el-Balah and four others in air strikes on the northern Jabalia refugee camp.

The latest killings helped push the Gaza health ministry’s war death count to 40,099.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that started the war resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Israeli military said troops continued operations in central and southern Gaza and “eliminated” operatives in Rafah, on the territory’s border with Egypt.

From the Israeli-designated safe zone in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, Lina Saleha, 44, said she could hear “constant artillery shelling” and the rumble of tanks “getting closer.”

“That’s not a good sign and we’re terrified and afraid,” she said.

In the West Bank, Israel said late Saturday it had killed “two senior Hamas officials” in Jenin. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed the deaths of two militants.

In Lebanon, the UN said three peacekeepers were lightly injured in a blast in the country’s south.

Calls for ‘pressure’

Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s death in Tehran — which Israel has not claimed responsibility for — and for an Israeli strike in Beirut that killed a top Hezbollah commander.

In Israel, Blinken will seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees”, the State Department said.

Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack, 111 are still held in Gaza including 39 the military says are dead. More than 100 were freed during a one-week truce in November.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club watchdog said that since the Gaza war began, Israeli forces have detained “more than 10,000 Palestinians” in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, which Israel seized in 1967.

At a rally in the Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday, Guri Lotto, 51, said he was protesting to “put pressure on the government” to secure a hostage release deal and end the war.

A US official travelling with Blinken said on condition of anonymity that “the feeling is… that various sticking points that existed before are bridgeable, and that work’s going to continue”.
 

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People walk on rubble at the damaged UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) building complex in western Gaza City’s Al-Sinaa neighbouhood on July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

A senior Hamas official told AFP on July 14 that the Palestinian militant group was withdrawing from talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza war because of Israeli “massacres” and its attitude in negotiations.

The senior official said Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh had told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the occupation’s (Israel) lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians.”

Top Hamas official says military chief Deif ‘fine’ after Israeli strike

A top Hamas official said Sunday that the group’s military leader Mohammed Deif is “fine” despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in an air strike.

“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing” the operations of the Hamas military wing, the official told AFP. Israel staged a huge bombing raid on a camp for displaced in southern Gaza on Saturday that it said was an attempt to kill Deif.

Gaza ceasefire talks have been halted after three days of intense negotiations failed to produce a viable outcome, two Egyptian security sources said on Saturday, blaming Israel for lacking a genuine intent to reach agreement.

The sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that the behaviour of the Israeli mediators revealed “internal discord”.

According to the sources, the Israeli delegation would give approvals on several conditions under discussion, but then come back with amendments or introduce new conditions that risked sinking the negotiations.

The sources said the mediators viewed the “contradictions, delays in responses, and the introduction of new terms contrary to what was previously agreed” as signs the Israeli side viewed the talks as a formality aimed at influencing public opinion.

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Hamas has accepted a US proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday.

The Hamas group has dropped a demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement, and would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts had said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the nine-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

A source in Israel’s negotiating team, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday there was now a real chance of achieving agreement. That was in sharp contrast to past instances in the nine-month-old war in Gaza, when Israel said conditions attached by Hamas were unacceptable.

A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. On Friday his office said talks would continue next week and emphasised that gaps between the sides still remained.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, since Hamas attacked southern Israeli cities on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to official Israeli figures.

The new proposal ensures that mediators would guarantee a temporary ceasefire, aid delivery and the withdrawal of Israeli troops as long as indirect talks continue to implement the second phase of the agreement, the Hamas source said.

Efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza have intensified over the past few days with active shuttle diplomacy among Washington, Israel and Qatar, which is leading mediation efforts from Doha, where the exiled Hamas leadership is based.

A regional source said the US administration was trying hard to secure a deal before the presidential election in November.

Netanyahu said on Friday that the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had returned from an initial meeting with mediators in Qatar and that negotiations would continue next week.

Some families of hostages on Saturday gave a statement to reporters ahead of a weekly hostage rally in Tel Aviv, in which they called on Netanyahu to go through with the deal.

“For the first time in many months, we feel hope,” said Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, 24, who was abducted from his kibbutz home on Oct. 7. “This is an opportunity that cannot be missed,” she said.

Fighting Rages

Meanwhile, Israeli forces stepped up military strikes across the enclave, killing at least 29 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, and wounding 100 others, the territory’s health officials said.

Among those killed in separate air strikes were five local journalists, raising the death count of journalists since Oct 7 to 158, according to the Hamas-led Gaza government media office.

Israeli forces, which have deepened their incursions into Rafah, near the border with Egypt, killed four Palestinian policemen and wounded eight others, in an air strike on their vehicle on Saturday, health officials said.

A statement issued by the Hamas-run interior ministry said the four included Fares Abdel-Al, the head of the police force in western Rafah neighbourhood of Tel Al-Sultan.

The Israeli military said forces continued “intelligence-base operations” in Rafah, destroyed several underground structures, seized weapons and equipment, and killed several Palestinian gunmen.

Israel said its operations in Rafah aimed to eradicate the last Hamas armed wing battalions.

In the central Al-Nuseirat camp, one of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps, an Israeli air strike on a house killed 10 Palestinians, medics said.

The Israeli military said it eliminated a Hamas rocket cell that operated from inside a humanitarian-designated area. It said it carried out a precise strike after taking measures to ensure civilians were unharmed. Hamas denies Israeli accusations it uses civilian properties for military purposes.

The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said fighters attacked Israeli forces in several areas of the enclave by anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.

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