Two officials from the Palestinian group Hamas said on Sunday that Hamas was awaiting Israel’s response to its ceasefire proposal, five days after the group accepted a key part of a US plan aimed at ending the nine-month war in Gaza.
“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.
The three-phase plan for the Palestinian enclave was introduced by US President Joe Biden in late May and is being brokered by Qatar and Egypt. It aims to end the war and free about 120 Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Another Palestinian official with knowledge of the ceasefire discussions said Israel was in talks with Qatar.
“They have discussed Hamas’ response with them and they have promised to give them Israel’s response within a few days,” the official told Reuters on Sunday, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said talks will continue this week but has not given a detailed timeline.
Later, an Israeli airstrike killed Hamas-appointed deputy labor minister Ehab al-Ghussein and three others at a church-run school in western Gaza City that housed Christian and Muslim families, Hamas media and the civil emergency service reported.
The Israeli military said it was investigating the report. Ghussein’s wife and children were killed in an Israeli attack in May.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign a deal. Instead, it said it would let the talks achieve that goal during a six-week first phase, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
A Palestinian official involved in the peace efforts said that if Israel accepted the proposal, it could lead to a framework agreement and end the war.
US Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns will travel to Qatar this week for talks, a source familiar with the matter said.
The conflict began nine months ago on October 7, when Hamas-led fighters attacked southern Israel from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages in the worst attack in Israel’s history, according to official 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.
The UN agency for Palestinians, UNRWA, described the situation as “increasingly tragic”, saying in a post on X: “Families are facing forced displacement, large-scale destruction and constant fear. Essential supplies are in short supply, the heat is unbearable, diseases are spreading”.
protests in israel
Protesters took to the streets across Israel on Sunday to pressure the government to reach a deal to repatriate those still held hostage in Gaza.
They blocked rush-hour traffic at major intersections across the country, picketed the homes of politicians and briefly set tires on fire on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.
Meanwhile, fighting continued in Gaza and northern Israel came under rocket attack by Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Residents of 24 Israeli towns fled for shelter as air raid sirens sounded. Police said one person was seriously injured. Hezbollah said it fired rockets at an army base.
In Gaza, Palestinian health officials said at least 15 people were killed in separate Israeli military strikes on Sunday.
At least six people were killed and several others wounded in an Israeli air strike on a house in the town of Zawayda in central Gaza, while six others were killed in an air strike on a house in western Gaza, health officials said.
Tanks have stepped up their attacks on the central and northern areas of Rafah on Egypt’s southern border. Health officials there said they had found the bodies of three Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the eastern part of the city.
The Israeli military said on Sunday that its forces killed 30 Palestinian gunmen in close combat and air strikes in Rafah over the past few days.
In Shejaiya, an eastern suburb of Gaza city, the army said its forces killed several Palestinian gunmen and seized weapons and explosives.
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.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
