The United States believes the remaining differences between Israel and Hamas can be bridged in negotiations over the Palestinian militant group’s latest ceasefire proposal, as talks resume in Cairo on Wednesday.

Israeli forces on Tuesday seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter during Israel’s seven-month-old offensive. This cut off a vital route for aid into the tiny enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and hungry.

In Cairo, all five delegations participating in ceasefire talks on Tuesday — Hamas, Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar — reacted positively to the resumption of negotiations, and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday morning, two Egyptian sources said.

CIA Director Bill Burns was to travel from Cairo to Israel later on Wednesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials, a source familiar with his travel said.

Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been softened.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas presented a revised proposal, and the new text suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.” Speaking on Tuesday, he declined to specify what those were.

Since the only pause in the conflict so far, a week-long ceasefire in November, the two sides have been blocked by Hamas’ refusal to free more Israeli hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict and Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only a temporary halt.

Israeli army footage on Tuesday showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex between Gaza and Egypt, and the Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side. Israel says Rafah is Hamas fighters’ last stronghold.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut on Tuesday, warned that if Israel’s military aggression continued in Rafah, there would be no truce agreement.

Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians, many of whom were previously displaced from other parts of Gaza earlier in the conflict, to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 km (12 miles) away.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to agree to a truce. “Make no mistake – a full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe,” Guterres said.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said “panic and despair” were gripping the people in Rafah.

Heavy shelling in Rafah

Residents reported heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. A Rafah municipal building caught fire after Israeli shelling, and one Palestinian was killed and several wounded, medics said. An Israeli strike also killed two Palestinians on a motorcycle, they said.

Health officials said Abu Yousef Al-Najar, the main hospital in Rafah, closed on Tuesday after heavy bombardment nearby led medical staff and around 200 patients to flee.

“They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies,” said Emad Joudat, 55, a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.

The U.N. and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into southern Gaza — Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom — virtually cut the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.

Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

Red Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted. “These crossings are a lifeline… They need to be reopened without any delay,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of U.N. aid agency UNRWA, said on X.

The White House said it had been told the Kerem Shalom crossing would re-open on Wednesday and fuel deliveries through Rafah would resume then too. According to Hamas officials, a draft proposal and an official briefed on the talks, the proposal that Hamas approved on Monday included a first phase with a six-week ceasefire, an influx of aid to Gaza, the return of 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, and release by Israel of 30 detained Palestinian children and women for each released Israeli hostage.

Critics of the Gaza war have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to change course. The U.S., Israeli’s closest ally and main weapons supplier, has delayed some arms shipments to Israel for two weeks, according to four sources on Tuesday.

The White House and Pentagon declined comment, but this would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its full support to Israel after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

Israel’s offensive has killed 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Ashdod, Israel, on May 1, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Accepting a ceasefire deal with Israel should be a “no-brainer” for Hamas, but the motivations of the militants’ elusive Gaza-based leadership remain unclear, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.

Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, has announced that its delegation will return to Cairo on Saturday to resume long-running talks brokered by Egypt and Qatar that would temporarily halt Israel’s offensive in return for freeing hostages. “We wait to see whether, in effect, they can take yes for an answer on the ceasefire and release of hostages,” Mr. Blinken said on May 3. “The reality in this moment is the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas.”

Noting that the militants “purport to represent” the Palestinian people, Mr. Blinken said: “If it is true, then taking the ceasefire should be a no-brainer.” “But maybe something else is going on, and we’ll have a better picture of that in the coming days,” he said.

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Mr. Blinken pointed to difficulties negotiating with Hamas, which the United States considers a terrorist group and does not engage with directly and which Israel has vowed to eliminate. “The leaders of Hamas that we’re indirectly engaged with — through the Qataris, through the Egyptians — are, of course, living outside of Gaza,” Mr. Blinken said. “The ultimate decision-makers are the folks who are actually in Gaza itself with whom none of us have direct contact.”

Mr. Blinken was addressing the McCain Institute’s Sedona Forum in Arizona days after he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top leaders on his latest visit to the Middle East.

Ahead of his talks with Mr. Blinken, Mr. Netanyahu vowed to push ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah regardless of the outcome of truce negotiations.

US President Joe Biden’s administration has repeatedly warned Israel against moving on Rafah, where an estimated 1.2 million Palestinians have taken shelter.

Mr. Blinken said that Israel, which counts on the United States for military and diplomatic support, has yet to present “a credible plan to genuinely protect the civilians who are in harm’s way”.

“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” Mr. Blinken said.

Global criticism of the war’s toll on civilians has mounted, as has pressure on the Biden administration. The war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The militants also took around 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128 remain in Gaza, including 35 believed to be dead.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,622 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Saudis want progress ‘as soon as possible’

Mr. Blinken on Monday held his latest meeting with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, to discuss potential normalization with Israel.

“He’s made it clear that he wants to do something on normalization, and he’d like to do it as soon as possible,” but only if conditions are met, Mr. Blinken said.

Before Hamas’s October 7 attacks, Mr. Netanyahu had seen growing Arab recognition of Israel as a key legacy and Saudi Arabia, the guardian of Islam’s two holiest sites, would be the most coveted prize.

But Saudi Arabia has made clear it wants a pathway to a Palestinian state, a prospect long resisted by Netanyahu and adamantly opposed by his far-right allies.

“I believe that there can be a Palestinian state with necessary security guarantees for Israel,” Mr. Blinken said. “And to some extent, I think you’d have Israelis who would like to get to real separation. Well, that is one way to do it.”

While in Saudi Arabia Blinken said that the United States was nearly ready with a set of security promises sought by the kingdom in return for normalization with Israel.

China described the war in Gaza as a “disgrace to civilisation” and called on Thursday for an immediate ceasefire as the conflict stretched into its sixth month despite efforts by mediators to reach a truce.

U.S. President Joe Biden has urged Hamas to accept a ceasefire plan with Israel before the Muslim fasting month begins, which could be as early as Sunday depending on the sighting of the crescent moon.

However, mediators in Egypt have struggled to overcome tough obstacles in their attempts to negotiate a pause, while the United Nations has warned that famine looms for Palestinians trapped by the fighting.

“It is a tragedy for humankind and a disgrace for civilisation that today, in the 21st century, this humanitarian disaster cannot be stopped,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told a news conference in Beijing.

China, historically sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, has been calling for a ceasefire since the war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7.

“The international community must act urgently, making an immediate ceasefire and the cessation of hostilities an overriding priority, and ensuring humanitarian relief an urgent moral responsibility,” Mr. Wang said.

The war has reduced vast stretches of Gaza to a wasteland of gutted buildings and rubble and sparked a humanitarian disaster for its 2.4 million people.

‘Catastrophic’ hunger levels

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said Wednesday that 20 people have died of malnutrition and dehydration, at least half of them children.

Only limited aid has reached Gaza’s north, where the UN’s World Food Programme has warned that hunger has reached “catastrophic levels” in northern Gaza, where aid has been limited.

“Children are dying of hunger-related diseases and suffering severe levels of malnutrition,” the WFP said.

According to Gaza’s health ministry, one of the latest victims was a 15-year-old girl who died at Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.

Health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said “the famine in northern Gaza has reached lethal levels” and could claim thousands of lives unless Gaza receives more aid and medical supplies.

Gazans were waiting to collect bags of flour outside a UN refugee agency office in the southern city of Rafah, now home to nearly 1.5 million Palestinians, most of them displaced by the war.

“The flour they provide is not enough,” said displaced man Muhammad Abu Odeh. “They do not provide us with sugar or anything else except flour.”

In Khan Yunis, southern Gaza’s largest city, dozens of people went to inspect their homes and take what belongings they could recover after Israeli forces pulled out of the city centre, an AFP correspondent said.

The army has yet to respond to an AFP request to confirm such a withdrawal.

Ramadan tensions

The war began after Hamas launched the October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in about 1,160 deaths, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

The militants also took around 250 hostages. Israel believes 99 of them remain alive in Gaza and that 31 have died.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 30,717 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to push on with the campaign to destroy Hamas, before or after any truce deal.

Mr. Biden called on Hamas on Tuesday to accept a truce plan brokered by U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators, saying “it’s in the hands of Hamas right now”.

The proposed deal would pause fighting for “at least six weeks”, see the “release of sick, wounded, elderly and women hostages” and allow for “a surge of humanitarian assistance”, the White House said.

One known sticking point centres on an Israeli demand for Hamas to provide a list of hostages still being held, a task Hamas says it is unable to complete while Israeli bombing continues.

The Palestinian Islamist group said in a statement it had “shown the required flexibility with the aim of reaching an agreement”, insisting on a complete halt to the fighting.

Violence has flared in past years during Ramadan in annexed east Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound — Islam’s third-holiest site and Judaism’s most sacred, known to Jews as the Temple Mount.

Hamas has urged Muslims to flock there in great numbers, as they do every year, while some Israeli far-right politicians have urged restrictions.

Israel has said Muslims will initially be allowed into the site “in similar numbers” as in recent years, followed by a weekly “situation assessment”.

‘Widespread starvation’

Jordanian, U.S. and other planes have repeatedly airdropped food into Gaza but WFP deputy chief Carl Skau said “airdrops are a last resort and will not avert famine”.

South Africa petitioned the International Court of Justice on Wednesday to impose more emergency measures against Israel over what it described as “widespread starvation” in Gaza.

British Foreign Minister David Cameron also pressed Israel on Wednesday to increase the flow of aid into Gaza.

More than 100 people were reported killed in bloody chaos last week when thousands of people swarmed aid trucks. Gaza officials blamed the deaths on Israeli gunfire, while the army insisted most were trampled or run over.

Another truck convoy was diverted by Israeli troops within Gaza late on Tuesday and then stopped by “a large crowd of desperate people who looted the food”, the WFP said.

Israel, which has recalled its UN envoy in a sign of growing tensions, said the UN Security Council should “designate Hamas immediately as a terrorist organisation” and impose sanctions on it.

Palestinians gather on a beach in the hope of getting aid air-dropped over Gaza, amid the ongoing the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel and Hamas are inching toward a new deal that would free some of the roughly 130 hostages held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a weekslong pause in the war, now in its fifth month.

U.S. President Joe Biden says a deal could go into effect as early as Monday, ahead of what is seen as an unofficial deadline — the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, around March 10.

A deal would bring some respite to desperate people in Gaza, who have borne a staggering toll, as well as to the anguished families of Israeli hostages taken during Hamas’ October 7 attack that sparked the war.

Here is a look at the emerging agreement.

According to a senior official from Egypt, a six-week ceasefire would go into effect, and Hamas would agree to free up to 40 hostages — mostly civilian women, at least two children, and older and sick captives. Israel would release at least 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the official said.

Israel would also allow displaced Palestinians to return to certain areas in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel’s ground offensive and suffered widespread destruction, according to the official from Egpyt, which is mediating the deal along with the U.S. and Qatar.

The Egyptian official said aid deliveries would be ramped up during the cease-fire, with 300 to 500 trucks entering the beleaguered territory per day, far more than the daily average number of trucks entering since the start of the war.

The deliveries to areas across Gaza would be facilitated by Israel, whose forces would refrain from attacks on them and on police escorting the aid convoys, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the talks with journalists.

Despite Mr. Biden’s optimism, both sides continue to posture ahead of any final agreement even as talks continue in Qatar. Both Israeli and Hamas officials downplayed any sense of progress.

Israel and Hamas have been far apart on their terms for a deal in the past, dragging out negotiations that appeared to have momentum.

Israel wants all female soldiers included in the first phase of hostage releases, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing talks. Hamas views all soldiers as more significant bargaining chips and is likely to press back on this demand. The Egyptian official said the female soldiers were at this point being held off until after the first release.

The Egyptian official said the sides also are discussing how many Palestinians would be allowed to return to northern Gaza and whether to limit their return to women and men over 50.

Talks are also pinning down which areas of Gaza that Israel would withdraw troops from, the Egyptian official said, adding that Israel wants Hamas to refrain from using those it left as staging grounds for attacks. It also wants Hamas to stop firing rockets at southern Israel. Hamas has so far rejected both demands, the official said.

The emerging deal leaves a door open for Israel to operate in the southern border town of Rafah once it expires. More than half of Gaza’s population has fled to the southern city on the Egyptian border. Israel wants to destroy what it says are the few Hamas battalions left standing there.

During the temporary ceasefire, both sides would negotiate toward an extension of the deal that the Egyptian official said would include the release of all the female soldiers in exchange for a higher number of imprisoned Palestinians, including those serving long sentences for deadly attacks.

The U.S. hopes the new deal will be a launching pad for implementing its vision for a postwar Gaza that would eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. It wants Gaza to be governed by a revamped Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. On Monday, it took a first step that could usher in U.S.-backed reforms by disbanding the self-rule government.

Israel wants to retain overall security control in the Gaza Strip and has rejected having world powers impose a state on it.