Hamas ‘waiting for response’ from Israel on ceasefire proposal as air strikes pound Gaza
Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, two officials from the militant Islamist group said on Sunday, five days after it accepted a key part of a US plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war in Gaza.
“We have left our response with the mediators and are waiting to hear the occupation’s response,” one of the two Hamas officials told Reuters.
The three-phase plan for the Palestinian enclave was put forward at the end of May by US president Joe Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt. It aims to end the war and free around 120 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.
Another Palestinian official, with knowledge of the ceasefire deliberations, said Israel was in talks with the Qataris.
“They have discussed with them Hamas’s response and they promised to give them Israel’s response within days,” the official told Reuters on Sunday.
Israel has said it will send a delegation in the coming days to continue truce talks with Qatari mediators which began recently in Doha.
But a spokesperson for Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said “gaps” remained with Hamas on how to secure a ceasefire and hostage release deal, Agence France-Presse reported.
Hamas, which controls Gaza, has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign an agreement. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, a Hamas source said.
A Palestinian official said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the war.
Israel carried out deadly air strikes in the Gaza Strip as the war entered its tenth month on Sunday, with fighting raging across the Palestinian territory despite fresh diplomatic efforts under way to halt the violence.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said on Sunday that the bodies of six people, including two children, who were killed in Israeli strikes had arrived at al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central city of Deir al-Balah.
Paramedics also said on Sunday that six people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a house in a northern area of Gaza City.
On Saturday, Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 16 people had been killed in a strike on a school run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (Unrwa) that was sheltering displaced people in Nuseirat, central Gaza.
The Israeli military said its aircraft had targeted “terrorists” operating around the al-Jawni school.
Protests aimed at pressuring the Israeli government to reach a hostage deal with Hamas began across the country on Sunday, with demonstrators blocking roads and picketing at the homes of government ministers.
Protests began at 6.29am Israel time, corresponding to the time of Hamas’s October 7th assault on Israel, according to Israeli media.
The demonstrators took to the streets, blocking rush hour traffic at major intersections across the country. They briefly set fire to tyres on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.
At least 38,098 Palestinians have been killed and 87,705 others injured in Israel’s military offensive on Gaza since October 7th, Gaza’s Hamas-controlled health ministry said on Saturday. – Agencies
