A senior Hamas official on Saturday rejected US President Joe Biden’s optimism that a ceasefire in Gaza was near after talks in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
“To say we are getting close to an agreement is an illusion. We are not facing an agreement or real negotiations, but the imposition of American dictates,” Sami Abu Zuhri, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, told AFP.
He was responding to Biden’s comment on Friday that “we’re closer than we’ve ever been.”
Biden spoke after two days of talks in Qatar, where Washington sought to bridge differences between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, which has been at war in the Gaza Strip for more than 10 months.
The hopes expressed earlier during months of ceasefire talks have proven unfounded.
But the stakes have risen significantly since the killing of Fuad Shukr, the top operational chief of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, and Ismail Haniyeh, the political chief of Hamas, in late July.
Their deaths prompted Iran and Hezbollah to vow retaliation and raised fears of a wider war in the Middle East.
In an effort to avert a wider conflict, Western and Arab diplomats have been circulating in the region to press for a Gaza agreement, which they say could help avert a wider conflict.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit the region later this week to help finalise an agreement.
Hamas officials have objected to Israel’s “new conditions” in the latest proposal drafted by Washington.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Saturday that the Israeli delegation expressed “cautious optimism” about the prospects for a deal after returning from Doha.
“It is hoped that heavy pressure from the United States and the mediators on Hamas will end their opposition to the US proposal, leading to a breakthrough in the talks,” it said.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy urged all parties to “participate positively and flexibly” in the talks.
“We underline the importance of avoiding any actions that would undermine the prospects for peace in the region,” he said.
“There’s a lot at stake.”
Attacks in Lebanon, Gaza
As efforts toward a ceasefire continued, killings increased in Gaza and Lebanon.
Lebanon’s health ministry said 10 Syrians, including a woman and her two children, were killed in Israeli air strikes in the southern Nabatieh region.
The attack was one of the deadliest in southern Lebanon since the start of the Gaza war, with almost daily exchanges of gunfire between Israel and Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said it attacked a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In Hamas-run Gaza, the Civil Defense Authority said Israeli airstrikes killed 15 members of the same Palestinian family. The deaths in al-Jawaida helped push the Gaza Health Ministry’s war death toll to 40,074.
“We are seeing indescribable scenes in the morgue of limbs and severed heads and mutilated children,” said Omar al-Drimli, a relative.
Israel’s military told AFP that overnight its forces struck “terrorist infrastructure” in central Gaza from where the rockets were being fired.
“There are reports that as a result of the attack, civilians in an adjacent building were killed. The incident is being reviewed,” it said.
The war has destroyed Gaza’s housing and healthcare infrastructure, leaving children vulnerable to preventable diseases.
The United Nations on Friday called for a seven-day halt in fighting so it could vaccinate children against polio, as the Palestinian health ministry reported the first polio case in Gaza in 25 years.
‘Bring them home’
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.
Hamas has also taken 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 Israeli military says 332 soldiers have been killed in the Gaza operation since the ground offensive began on October 27.
In Israel, Blinken will try to “negotiate a ceasefire and the release of hostages and detainees,” the State Department said.
Mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States are working to finalize details of a framework agreement introduced by Biden in May and proposed by Israel, he said.
Thousands of people rallied in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities on Saturday demanding a deal to bring back the remaining Gaza hostages.
“We all know there is a real possibility of a deal,” said Mor Korngold, the brother of hostage Tal Shoham.
“These are critical times for my brother, for the hostages, for the soldiers, for the people displaced from their homes, for the entire country.”
In a joint statement after two days of talks in Qatar, the mediators said they would meet in Cairo “before the end of next week” and hope to reach an agreement.
Gazans are on the move again
During ceasefire talks, thousands of civilians fled again after the Israeli military issued new evacuation orders ahead of an imminent operation in central-southern Gaza.
“During each round of negotiations, they add pressure by forcing the evacuation of people and committing massacres,” said Issa Murad, a displaced Palestinian in Deir al-Balah.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that troops had expanded operations around Gaza’s main southern town of Khan Younis over the past day, including “closing” a Hamas incursion that fired ammunition toward Nirim, just outside Gaza.
The air strikes targeted the Hamad residential towers in the northwest of the city, witnesses told AFP.
Palestinian officials say two people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on a car in the northern city of Jenin in the occupied West Bank. The Israeli military said the attack targeted a “terrorist cell”.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
