Cargo trucks park in Egypt, near the Egyptian-Israeli border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, as seen from Israel, on April 28, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

A senior Hamas official told AFP on April 28 that the group would deliver its response to Israel’s latest counterproposal for a Gaza ceasefire on April 29 in Egypt.

“A Hamas delegation headed by Khalil al-Hayya will arrive in Egypt tomorrow… and deliver the movement’s response” to the Israeli proposal during a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials, said the official who declined to be named.

Mediator Egypt had sent its own delegation to Israel this week to jump-start stalled negotiations even as fighting in the Gaza Strip rages.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been unsuccessfully trying to broker a new Gaza truce deal ever since a one-week halt to the fighting in November saw 80 Israeli hostages exchanged for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

Diplomatic efforts have been stepped up in recent days to reach a truce and hostage-release deal.

U.S. news website Axios, citing two Israeli officials, reported that Israel’s latest proposal includes a willingness to discuss the “restoration of sustainable calm” in Gaza after hostages are released.

It is the first time in the nearly seven-month war that Israeli leaders have suggested they are open to discussing an end to the war, Axios said.

“Hamas is open to discussing the new proposal positively,” another Hamas source close to the negotiations told AFP.

The source added that the group is “keen to reach an agreement that guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (prisoner) exchange and ensuring an end to the (Gaza) siege”.

The delegation would also discuss an Egyptian proposal concerning a ceasefire and prisoner exchange as part of the overall deal to stop the fighting in Gaza, the source said.

He said the Egyptian proposal showed “some progress”.

It guarantees absence of Israeli forces on Al-Rashid road, a key artery in the strip, when displaced Palestinians return from the south of the territory to the north, he said.

It also proposes that Israeli forces remain 500 m away from the main Salaheddin highway and ensures that civilians are not subjected to shooting, arrest or detention when they return to their homes.

Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services, reported “noticeable progress in bringing the views of the Egyptian and Israeli delegations closer”.

Impasse

For several weeks now negotiations to end the war had hit an impasse.

In early April, Hamas had said it was studying a proposal, after talks in Cairo, and Al-Qahera reported progress. Days later Israel and Hamas accused each other of undermining negotiations.

Thousands of Israeli protesters meanwhile have stepped up pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal that would see the remaining hostages freed.

The Israeli Army says 129 hostages are still held captive in Gaza, including 34 it says are dead.

Some 250 people were abducted by Palestinian militants when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.

The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israeli and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 34,454 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s Health Ministry.

Smoke billows following Israeli bombardment in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 25, 2024, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas militant group.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen clashed throughout the Gaza Strip over the weekend, as mediators picked up the pace of talks on a possible ceasefire to free hostages held by Hamas and bring a measure of Ramadan respite to the battered enclave.

Prospects for securing any truce looked uncertain, however, with Israel saying it was, in parallel, planning to expand its sweep to destroy Hamas, while the Islamist faction stood firm on its demand for a permanent end to the nearly five-month-old war.

Residents said Israeli forces shelled several areas of the enclave as tanks rolled into Beit Lahiya and soldiers and gunmen waged running battles in the Zeitoun sector of Gaza City — both in the north, which had been conquered early in the offensive.

At least 86 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes since Saturday, medics said on Sunday. Israel’s military said two soldiers died in fighting in south Gaza and that its forces killed or captured Palestinian gunmen in Zeitoun and elsewhere.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened his war Cabinet for a briefing late on Saturday by intelligence chiefs who returned from a meeting with Qatari, Egyptian and U.S. mediators in Paris about a possible second Gaza ceasefire.

White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN’s “State of the Union” that negotiators for the United States, Egypt, Qatar and Israel “came to an understanding” on the basic contours of a hostage deal during talks in Paris.

The deal is still under negotiation, said Mr. Sullivan, who added there will have to be indirect discussions by Qatar and Egypt with Hamas.

Mr. Netanyahu told CBS’ “Face the Nation” it was not clear yet whether a hostage deal would materialise from the talks, declining to discuss specifics but saying Hamas needed to make more reasonable demands.

“They are in another planet. But if they come down to a reasonable situation, then yes we’ll have a hostage deal. I hope so,” he said.

Doha talks this week

Egyptian security sources said there would be more talks this week in Doha, with mediators shuttling between Hamas and Israeli delegates, and a follow-up round in Cairo. There was no immediate confirmation of that from Israel, Hamas or Qatar.

The first pause in fighting, in November, saw the release of around half of the 253 people Hamas seized during an Oct. 7 cross-border killing spree that sparked the war. In that deal, Israel freed three times the number of Palestinians from its security prisons and admitted more humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Israeli media, citing unnamed officials, reported there was a framework for the return of around a third of the 130 remaining hostages over a six-week truce covering the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. There was no formal confirmation from either side.

Palestinian officials said Hamas was insisting on Israel calling off the offensive and withdrawing forces under any deal. Israel signalled intent to move into one of the last towns where Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction, has intact forces.

“We are working to achieve another framework for the release of our abductees, as well as the completion of the elimination of the Hamas battalions in Rafah,” Netanyahu said on Facebook, referring to the town in the far south of Gaza near the border with Egypt.

This week, he added, the Israeli security cabinet would approve military plans for Rafah – including the evacuation of more than a million displaced Palestinian civilians who have been sheltering there, and whose fate worries world powers.

Almost 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, Gaza medical officials say. The Hamas raid of Oct. 7 killed 1,200 people in Israel, which has also lost 241 soldiers in Gaza ground fighting that followed, according to official tallies.