People inspect damage and remove items from their homes following Israeli airstrikes on April 7, in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images
Hamas says it’s examining the latest Israeli suggestions for a cease-fire in Gaza, seven months into the conflict that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and that Israeli leaders have said could soon intensify further if a deal between the two sides is not reached. International efforts are continuing to try to firm up areas of agreement, with mediators led by Egypt at the heart of efforts to encourage both sides to end the violence. A senior Hamas official told NPR that the militant group would respond to Israel’s latest proposed conditions once it had examined them in full, but was “still studying” them and there was “no scheduled timing” for their response.
He did not offer specifics about Israel’s proposals, but said it followed conditions Hamas had laid down earlier this month, which focused on an exchange involving Israeli captives held in Gaza for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israel, as well as a six-week cessation of hostilities. An Egyptian delegation left Israel on Friday, an official told AP, after holding discussions over the possibility of a multi-phase and lengthy Gaza cease-fire. The plan would allow civilians currently in the south of the territory to return to their homes further north, and might eventually lead to a more permanent agreement that ends the fighting altogether. A major U.S. concern — shared by its international partners — is that the Israeli military will launch a full-scale assault on Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have sought shelter after fleeing the widespread fighting elsewhere in the Gaza Strip.
Israel has argued that further ground-based military action in Rafah is necessary for it to destroy remaining groups of Hamas fighters. But several countries including neighboring Egypt have said that any such offensive by the Israelis would have even more severe consequences for civilians, and could further destabilize the broader region. Nonetheless Israeli forces have massed around the city, where airstrikes continue to take place daily. On Saturday one airstrike in the city killed four children, according to local health officials. Hamas has repeatedly said it will not enter into a new agreement unless it contains a provision for a permanent truce. Meanwhile, the U.S. military has begun construction of an offshore loading platform to help deliver more aid to Gaza, with plans for trucks to be ferried from that platform to a temporary pier on the Gaza coastline as part of a large-scale operation that could begin within weeks.
An official from the World Economic Forum said senior leaders, including Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, will meet in the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh next week. The prime minister of Qatar, another nation at the center of Gaza cease-fire negotiations will attend, alongside the foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. He will travel there after an expected Tuesday visit to Israel as the State Department is reviewing whether to suspend aid for an Israel military unit that it found had committed serious human rights violations against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. Meanwhile China will also host senior leaders from Abbas’ Fatah party and Hamas next week for further talks, designed to help heal a long-running political dispute between the two factions that had until Oct. 7 ruled respectively over Gaza and the West Bank. The U.S. government does not publicly support any such reconciliation, given that it considers Hamas a terrorist group but recognizes the legitimacy of Fatah and its leadership of the Palestinian Authority that exercises limited self-rule in the occupied West Bank.
CAIRO (AP) — Hamas said Saturday that it was reviewing a new Israeli proposal for a cease-fire in Gaza, as Egypt intensified efforts to broker a deal to end the months-long war and stave off a planned Israeli ground offensive into the southern city of Rafah. Senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya gave no details of Israel’s offer, but said it was in response to a proposal from Hamas two weeks ago. Negotiations earlier this month centered on a six-week cease-fire proposal and the release of 40 civilian and sick hostages in exchange for freeing hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails. A separate Hamas statement said leaders from the three main militant groups active in Gaza discussed attempts to end the war. It didn’t mention the Israeli proposal. The Hamas statements came hours after a high-level Egyptian delegation wrapped up a visit to Israel where it discussed a “new vision” for a prolonged cease-fire in Gaza, according to an Egyptian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to freely discuss the developments.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Israel’s new proposal was directly related to Friday’s visit by Egyptian mediators. The discussions between Egyptian and Israeli officials focused on the first stage of a multi-phase plan that would include a limited exchange of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners, and the return of a significant number of displaced Palestinians to their homes in northern Gaza “with minimum restrictions,” the Egyptian official said. The mediators are working on a compromise that will answer most of both parties’ main demands, which could pave the way to continued negotiations with the goal of a larger deal to end the war, the official said. There is growing international pressure for Hamas and Israel to reach an agreement on a cease-fire and avert a possible Israeli attack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have sought refuge after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the territory.
Israel has been insisting for months it plans a ground offensive into Rafah, on the border with Egypt, where it says many remaining Hamas militants are holed up, despite calls for restraint from the international community including Israel’s staunchest ally, the United States. Egypt has cautioned an offensive into Rafah could have “catastrophic consequences” on the humanitarian situation in Gaza, where famine is feared, as well as on regional peace and security. The Israeli military has massed dozens of tanks and armored vehicles in southern Israel close to Rafah, and hit locations in the city in near-daily airstrikes. Early Saturday, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood, killing a man, his wife and their sons, ages 12, 10 and 8, according to records of the Abu Yousef al-Najjar hospital’s morgue. A neighbor’s 4-month-old girl was also killed, the records showed. Ahmed Omar rushed with other neighbors to the house after the 1:30 a.m. strike to look for survivors, but said they only found bodies and body parts. “It’s a tragedy,” he said. An Israeli airstrike later Saturday on a three-story building in Rafah killed seven people, including six members of the Ashour family, according to the morgue. Five people were killed in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza overnight when an Israeli strike hit a house, according to officials at the al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital.
Elsewhere, Israeli forces shot and killed two Palestinian men at a checkpoint in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the military said. It said the men had opened fire from a vehicle at troops stationed at Salem checkpoint near the Palestinian city of Jenin. Violence in the West Bank has flared since the war. The Ramallah-based Health Ministry says 491 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the territory. Washington has been critical of Israeli policies in the West Bank. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is expected in Israel on Tuesday, recently determined an army unit committed rights abuses there before the war in Gaza. But Blinken said in an undated letter to U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, obtained by The Associated Press on Friday, that he’s postponing a decision on blocking aid to the unit to give Israel more time to right the wrongdoing. Blinken stressed that overall U.S. military support for Israel’s defense wouldn’t be affected by the State Department’s eventual decision.
The U.S. has also been building a pier to deliver aid to Gaza through a new port. Israel’s military said Saturday that it would be operational by early May. The BBC reported the U.K. government was considering deploying troops to drive the trucks to carry the aid to shore, citing unidentified government sources. British officials declined to comment on the report. Another aid effort, a three-ship flotilla coming from Turkey, was prevented from sailing, organizers said. Hamas said Friday that it was open to any “ideas or suggestions” that take into consideration Palestinians’ needs. It has said it won’t back down from demands for a permanent cease-fire and full withdrawal of Israeli troops. Israel has rejected both and said it will continue military operations until Hamas is defeated and that it will retain a security presence in Gaza. Student protests over the war are growing on college campuses in the U.S., while demonstrations continue in many countries.
Hamas sparked the war by attacking into southern Israel on Oct. 7, with militants killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking around 250 hostage. Israel says the militants still hold around 100 hostages and the remains of more than 30 others. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s offensive, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, around two-thirds of them children and women. Its count doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. The ministry said 32 people killed were brought to local hospitals over the past 24 hours. Israel blames Hamas for civilian casualties, accusing it of embedding in residential areas. Israel has reported at least 260 soldiers killed since the start of ground operations.
David Rising reported from Bangkok. Jack Jeffery in Jerusalem, Bassem Mroue in Beirut, and Danica Kirka in London, contributed to this report.
Source: NPR, AP, CNN
