Hamas said on Friday it rejected the “new conditions” of a ceasefire proposal in Gaza presented by US-led mediators during two days of talks in Qatar.
Diplomatic efforts to ease the suffering inflicted by more than 10 months of war have so far failed, but US President Joe Biden insisted after the latest round of talks that “we are closer than ever”.
The State Department said it was sending US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Israel this weekend to pursue the latest proposal.
Egypt, Qatar and US mediators are trying to finalize details of a framework initially outlined by Biden in May, which he said was proposed by Israel.
In a joint statement, the mediators said they had presented a proposal to both sides that would “fill the remaining gaps” and would continue to work in the coming days to elaborate on humanitarian provisions and a hostage-prisoner exchange.
Talks aimed at securing a speedy agreement are due to resume in Cairo “before the end of next week”.
Hamas, which did not attend the Doha talks, immediately expressed its opposition to the “new conditions” put forward by Israel in the latest plan.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on mediators to “put pressure” on Hamas to accept Biden’s framework.
Threats by Iran and its allies to attack Israel have given new impetus to ceasefire efforts in Gaza, and mediators are trying to broker a deal in the hope of ending the wider regional conflict.
“Nobody in the region should take any action to undermine this process,” Biden warned. “There are still a few more issues to sort out, I think we have a chance,” he told reporters later.
– ‘disastrous consequences –
An informed source told AFP that Hamas had objected to conditions including the keeping of Israeli troops on Gaza’s border with Egypt and the release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Israeli hostages.
However, Western ally Jordan has directly blamed Netanyahu for blocking the deal, with Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi urging “pressure from all those who want to see the deal completed.”
British Foreign Secretary David Lammy and his French counterpart Stephane Séjourné held talks in Israel on Friday to press for a deal.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told his counterparts that Iran expected foreign support if it sought revenge for the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran.
Sejourne responded that it would be “inappropriate” to discuss a response to any attack while diplomacy is in full swing to prevent one.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that Iran would face “catastrophic” consequences if it attacked Israel.
The deadly attack by Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank late Thursday drew international condemnation and calls for sanctions against others, including government ministers, over escalating violence against Palestinians since the start of the Gaza war.
The Israeli military said that “dozens of Israeli civilians, some of them masked”, entered the village of Jeit and “set fire to vehicles and structures in the area, threw stones and hurled Molotov cocktails”. One Palestinian man was shot and killed.
The West Bank-based Palestinian Foreign Ministry described the attack as “organized state terrorism.”
The EU’s top diplomat Josep Borrell said he would propose sanctions against the Israeli government for promoting violence against Jewish immigrants.
Israel’s right-wing Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a supporter of West Bank settlements, joined other Israeli leaders in condemning Thursday’s attack by “criminals.”
First case of polio registered
The war began as a result of an unprecedented attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October, which killed 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.
The militants also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom the military says are dead. More than 100 were released during a week-long ceasefire in November.
The death toll from Israel’s retaliatory military campaign rose to more than 40,000 on Thursday, according to the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry, though the ministry did not give details of civilian and militant casualties.
The war has devastated the besieged region’s healthcare infrastructure, prompting the World Health Organization to repeatedly warn about the threat of preventable diseases.
On Friday, the Palestinian Health Ministry said a 10-month-old child in Gaza who had not been vaccinated was diagnosed with polio, the first case in the territory in 25 years, according to the World Health Organization.
The announcement came hours after UN chief Antonio Guterres called for two seven-day breaks in the Gaza war to allow more than 640,000 children to be vaccinated against type 2 poliovirus, which was first detected in the region’s wastewater in June.
While ceasefire talks were ongoing, thousands of civilians were re-entering Palestinian territory, as the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders ahead of imminent military action.
The UN estimates that more than 170,000 people will be affected by these orders, and will be forced to live in the shrinking remains of what was declared a safe zone on humanitarian grounds.
According to the United Nations, the area where people have been asked to move covers only 11 percent of Gaza.
“During each round of negotiations, they add pressure by forcing people to evacuate and committing massacres,” Issa Murad, a displaced Palestinian in Deir al-Balah, said of the Israeli military.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
