Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that any ceasefire deal in Gaza must allow Israel to continue fighting until its goals are met, as talks are expected to resume on a US plan aimed at ending the nine-month war.
Five days after Hamas accepted a key part of the plan, two officials from the Palestinian militant group said the group was awaiting Israel’s response to its latest proposal.
Netanyahu was due to hold consultations late Sunday on the next steps in negotiations on a three-step plan unveiled by US President Joe Biden in May and being brokered by Qatar and Egypt.
Its aim is to end the war and release approximately 120 Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
Hamas has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign a deal. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve this during a first six-week phase, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity.
But Netanyahu said he stressed that the deal should not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until its war aims, defined at the start of the war, were met, including eliminating Hamas’ military and governance capabilities and returning hostages.
“The plan that Israel has agreed to, and that President Biden has welcomed, will allow Israel to return the hostages without violating other war aims,” Netanyahu said.
He said the agreement should also stop the smuggling of weapons to Hamas through the Gaza-Egypt border and not allow thousands of armed militants to return to northern Gaza.
US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns will meet Qatar’s prime minister and the intelligence chiefs of Israel and Egypt in Doha on Wednesday, a source familiar with the matter said on condition of anonymity.
Burns is also expected to visit Cairo this week with an Israeli delegation, Egypt’s Al Qahera News TV reported on Sunday, citing a highly placed source.
A Palestinian official involved in the talks said that if Israel accepts the proposal, it could lead to a framework agreement and end the war.
“We have left our response to the mediators and are waiting for the occupiers’ response,” one of the two Hamas officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
Another Palestinian official with knowledge of the ceasefire discussions said Israel was in talks with Qatar and a response was expected within days.
protests in israel
In Israel, protesters took to the streets across the country to pressure the government to agree to a Gaza ceasefire deal that would see the release of hostages still held in Gaza.
They blocked rush-hour traffic at major intersections across the country, staged sit-ins outside politicians’ homes and briefly set tires on fire on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.
Palestinian health officials in Gaza said at least 15 people were killed in Israeli attacks.
They included Ehab al-Ghussein, the Hamas-appointed deputy labor minister whose wife and children were killed in May, and three others who were killed in an attack on a church-run school in western Gaza City that sheltered families, Hamas media and the Civil Emergency Service said.
The Israeli military said it took steps to reduce the risk of harm to civilians there, after which it attacked militants hiding in the school, as well as a nearby facility where weapons were being manufactured.
Israeli tanks have stepped up their attacks on the central and northern areas of Rafah on the southern Gaza border with Egypt. Health officials there said they had found the bodies of three Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the eastern part of the city.
The armed wings of Hamas and allied militant group Islamic Jihad said fighters attacked Israeli forces with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs in several locations across the Gaza Strip.
The Israeli military said its forces had killed 30 Palestinian gunmen in Rafah recently, and that one of its soldiers was killed in the fighting.
In Gaza City’s eastern suburb of Shejaiya, the army said its forces had killed several gunmen and seized weapons and explosives. It released a drone video showing gunmen in a house, some of whom appeared wounded or dead.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the video.
The conflict began on October 7 when Hamas-led fighters who control Gaza attacked southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.
More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli military action, according to Gaza health officials, and the coastal region has been reduced to largely rubble.
Gaza’s health ministry does not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, but officials say most of those killed during the war have been civilians. Israel has lost 324 soldiers in Gaza, and says at least a third of the Palestinians killed were combatants.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
