Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu headed a security cabinet meeting to vote on a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal that should take effect ton January 19, in Jerusalem on January 17, 2025.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Saturday (January 18, 2025) that Israel reserves the right to resume fighting in Gaza with U.S. support, as he pledged to bring home all hostages held in the Palestinian territory.

“We reserve the right to resume the war if necessary, with American support,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised statement, a day before a ceasefire is set to take effect.

Also read | Israel’s Cabinet approves deal for ceasefire in Gaza; 737 hostages to be freed in first phase

“We are thinking of all our hostages … I promise you that we will achieve all our objectives and bring back all the hostages.

“With this agreement, we will bring back 33 of our brothers and sisters, the majority (of them) alive,” he said.

He said the 42-day first phase, which starts on Sunday, was a “temporary ceasefire.”

“If we are forced to resume the war, we will do so with force,” Mr. Netanyahu said, adding that Israel had “changed the face of the Middle East” since the war began.

Cairo, Egypt:

Negotiators geared up for a crucial weekend of Gaza ceasefire talks Saturday, as Hamas said it was sending delegates to Cairo but would not participate in the discussions, and fighting raged in the Palestinian territory.

The United States, Egypt and Qatar have spent months trying to broker an end to the war in Gaza between Hamas Palestinian militants and Israel.

The war, sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel, has devastated Gaza, displaced nearly all of its population at least once and triggered a humanitarian crisis.

The White House said progress had been made at the latest round this week, although the possible permanent presence of Israeli troops along the Gaza-Egypt border has emerged as a major sticking point.

Previous bouts of optimism during months of on-off ceasefire and hostage release negotiations have always proven unfounded.

A senior Hamas official said a delegation from the Islamist group was heading to Cairo, but that they would not engage in the talks. Instead, they would meet with senior Egyptian officials for updates on the negotiations.

The delegation would “be briefed… but this does not mean it will take part in the negotiations”, the official told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The official said Hamas would insist Israel withdraw all its forces from all of Gaza, including “from the border area with Egypt”, known as the Philadelphi Corridor.

‘Pivotal step’

The basis of the talks is a framework which US President Joe Biden outlined on May 31, and which he described as an Israeli proposal.

A second Hamas official on Saturday reiterated that “the leadership of Hamas, including its leader Yahya Sinwar” had already agreed to the Biden plan and want it put into effect without “amendment of its wording.”

The three-phase plan outlined by Biden and endorsed by the UN Security Council would initially see hostages exchanged for Palestinians in Israeli jails during what Biden called a “full and complete ceasefire” lasting six weeks.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has since insisted on keeping troops along the corridor, arguing Israel needs to prevent Hamas from rebuilding its strength by smuggling in arms from Egypt.

The White House said CIA chief William Burns was among US officials taking part in the Cairo talks, alongside the heads of Israel’s spy agency and domestic security service.

An Egyptian source close to the talks said the United States was “discussing with mediators new proposals to bridge the gap between Israel and Hamas”.

The source said Sunday’s “enlarged round of negotiations” would be a “pivotal step in formulating an agreement that will be announced if Washington can pressure Netanyahu.”

Fighting raged in Gaza on Saturday, with AFP correspondents and civil defence rescue sources reporting ongoing Israeli artillery fire and air strikes across the Hamas-run territory.

An overnight strike on a house west of Khan Yunis in southern Gaza killed 11 people, including a woman and four children, a doctor at Nasser Hospital said.

In Gaza City’s Zeitun neighbourhood, gunfire and explosions echoed as Palestinian militants clashed with Israeli soldiers, an AFP correspondent reported.

The military announced the deaths of three soldiers in fighting in central Gaza on Friday, all of them non-commissioned officers.

The latest deaths bring the military’s losses in the Gaza campaign to 338 since it launched a ground offensive in the Palestinian territory on October 27.

Tens of thousands of civilians were on the move from Deir el-Balah and Khan Yunis after Israeli evacuation orders, which precede military operations, the United Nations said on Thursday.

“I have six children and every day I flee with them from one place to another,” said Khan Yunis resident Raghda Sammour.

Hostage protests

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,334 Palestinians in Gaza, according to Gaza’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths.

The UN rights office says most of the dead are women and children.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

Israel’s military recovered the remains of six hostages from a tunnel in the Khan Yunis area this week, and said bullets were found in their bodies.

Thousands protested in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities ahead of Sunday’s talks, calling for a deal to secure the release of the remaining hostages.

Efforts to reach a Gaza truce and avert a wider war intensified after the killings of two senior Iran-backed militants last month sparked threats of reprisals from Tehran and its Lebanese ally Hezbollah.

Gazans said they were desperate for an end to the war.

“We are tired and hope that the negotiations persist, the siege is lifted, and the war stops,” said Umm Muhammad Wadi, a displaced woman in Deir el-Balah.
 

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Tel Aviv, Israel:

Israel’s prime minister, under pressure at home and from abroad to reach a ceasefire deal with Hamas, on Sunday accused the Hamas operatives of obstinance in Gaza truce talks as top US diplomat Antony Blinken landed in Israel.

Making his ninth trip to the Middle East since the Gaza war began when Hamas attacked Israel in October, the US secretary of state is to meet Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders in a renewed bid to seal a deal that could help avert a wider conflagration.

Blinken is later set to travel on Tuesday to Cairo, where ceasefire talks will resume in the coming days.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reiterated that it is Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that must be pressured.

“Hamas, up to this moment, remains obstinate. It did not even send a representative to the talks in Doha. Therefore, the pressure should be directed at Hamas and (Yahya) Sinwar, not at the Israeli government,” Netanyahu said at a cabinet meeting, referring to the Hamas chief.

Western ally Jordan, hostage supporters protesting in Israel, and Hamas itself have called for pressure on Netanyahu in order that an agreement be reached.

Far-right members crucial to his governing coalition oppose any truce.

Ahead of Blinken’s visit, the foreign ministers of Britain and France were on Friday also in Israel to stress the urgency of a Gaza deal.

In late May, US President Joe Biden laid out a framework which he said was proposed by Israel. The UN Security Council later endorsed the proposal, which would freeze fighting for an initial six weeks as Israeli hostages are exchanged for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid enters the besieged Gaza Strip.

Ahead of the truce talks in Doha last Thursday and Friday, Hamas called on mediators to implement the Biden framework rather than holding more negotiations.

Hamas also announced its opposition to what it called “new conditions” from Israel.

On Saturday, Netanyahu’s office in a statement said Israeli negotiators have expressed “cautious optimism” about reaching a Gaza truce deal.

US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have also reported progress and a US official said remaining gaps were “bridgeable”.

But after Biden said “we are closer than we have ever been” to a deal, Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri dismissed as “an illusion” such optimistic talk.

Previous announcements that a deal was close during the months of on-off truce negotiations proved unfounded.

But the stakes have risen since the late July killings in quick succession of Iran-backed militant leaders, including Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh, and as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, deepened with a feared polio outbreak.

Israeli evacuation orders have “reduced the safe zone” in the south of the territory, leaving “no more space” for displaced Palestinians, said Samah Dib, 32.

Some people “are sleeping on the street” while clean water is scarce and “there’s food at the markets, but it’s very expensive and we have no money left”, said Dib, who like almost all Gazans is among the displaced.

As efforts towards a long-sought truce continued, so has the violence in Gaza but also in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and in Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hamas’s Iran-backed ally Hezbollah have traded near-daily fire throughout the war. They did so again on Sunday.

The rumble of tanks

Civil defence rescuers in Hamas-run Gaza reported seven killed in Israeli bombardment of Deir el-Balah and four others in air strikes on the northern Jabalia refugee camp.

The latest killings helped push the Gaza health ministry’s war death count to 40,099.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel that started the war resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The Israeli military said troops continued operations in central and southern Gaza and “eliminated” operatives in Rafah, on the territory’s border with Egypt.

From the Israeli-designated safe zone in southern Gaza’s Al-Mawasi, Lina Saleha, 44, said she could hear “constant artillery shelling” and the rumble of tanks “getting closer.”

“That’s not a good sign and we’re terrified and afraid,” she said.

In the West Bank, Israel said late Saturday it had killed “two senior Hamas officials” in Jenin. Hamas’s armed wing confirmed the deaths of two militants.

In Lebanon, the UN said three peacekeepers were lightly injured in a blast in the country’s south.

Calls for ‘pressure’

Iran and its regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s death in Tehran — which Israel has not claimed responsibility for — and for an Israeli strike in Beirut that killed a top Hezbollah commander.

In Israel, Blinken will seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees”, the State Department said.

Out of 251 hostages seized during Hamas’s attack, 111 are still held in Gaza including 39 the military says are dead. More than 100 were freed during a one-week truce in November.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club watchdog said that since the Gaza war began, Israeli forces have detained “more than 10,000 Palestinians” in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem, which Israel seized in 1967.

At a rally in the Israeli city of Haifa on Saturday, Guri Lotto, 51, said he was protesting to “put pressure on the government” to secure a hostage release deal and end the war.

A US official travelling with Blinken said on condition of anonymity that “the feeling is… that various sticking points that existed before are bridgeable, and that work’s going to continue”.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

People walk on rubble at the damaged UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) building complex in western Gaza City’s Al-Sinaa neighbouhood on July 12, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

A senior Hamas official told AFP on July 14 that the Palestinian militant group was withdrawing from talks on a ceasefire in the Gaza war because of Israeli “massacres” and its attitude in negotiations.

The senior official said Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh had told international mediators of the “decision to halt negotiations due to the occupation’s (Israel) lack of seriousness, continued policy of procrastination and obstruction, and the ongoing massacres against unarmed civilians.”

Top Hamas official says military chief Deif ‘fine’ after Israeli strike

A top Hamas official said Sunday that the group’s military leader Mohammed Deif is “fine” despite an Israeli attempt to kill him in an air strike.

“Commander Mohammed Deif is well and directly overseeing” the operations of the Hamas military wing, the official told AFP. Israel staged a huge bombing raid on a camp for displaced in southern Gaza on Saturday that it said was an attempt to kill Deif.

Gaza ceasefire talks have been halted after three days of intense negotiations failed to produce a viable outcome, two Egyptian security sources said on Saturday, blaming Israel for lacking a genuine intent to reach agreement.

The sources, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity, said that the behaviour of the Israeli mediators revealed “internal discord”.

According to the sources, the Israeli delegation would give approvals on several conditions under discussion, but then come back with amendments or introduce new conditions that risked sinking the negotiations.

The sources said the mediators viewed the “contradictions, delays in responses, and the introduction of new terms contrary to what was previously agreed” as signs the Israeli side viewed the talks as a formality aimed at influencing public opinion.

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Hamas has accepted a US proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday.

The Hamas group has dropped a demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement, and would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.

A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts had said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the nine-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

A source in Israel’s negotiating team, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Friday there was now a real chance of achieving agreement. That was in sharp contrast to past instances in the nine-month-old war in Gaza, when Israel said conditions attached by Hamas were unacceptable.

A spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. On Friday his office said talks would continue next week and emphasised that gaps between the sides still remained.

The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials, since Hamas attacked southern Israeli cities on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages, according to official Israeli figures.

The new proposal ensures that mediators would guarantee a temporary ceasefire, aid delivery and the withdrawal of Israeli troops as long as indirect talks continue to implement the second phase of the agreement, the Hamas source said.

Efforts to secure a ceasefire and hostage release in Gaza have intensified over the past few days with active shuttle diplomacy among Washington, Israel and Qatar, which is leading mediation efforts from Doha, where the exiled Hamas leadership is based.

A regional source said the US administration was trying hard to secure a deal before the presidential election in November.

Netanyahu said on Friday that the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had returned from an initial meeting with mediators in Qatar and that negotiations would continue next week.

Some families of hostages on Saturday gave a statement to reporters ahead of a weekly hostage rally in Tel Aviv, in which they called on Netanyahu to go through with the deal.

“For the first time in many months, we feel hope,” said Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, 24, who was abducted from his kibbutz home on Oct. 7. “This is an opportunity that cannot be missed,” she said.

Fighting Rages

Meanwhile, Israeli forces stepped up military strikes across the enclave, killing at least 29 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, and wounding 100 others, the territory’s health officials said.

Among those killed in separate air strikes were five local journalists, raising the death count of journalists since Oct 7 to 158, according to the Hamas-led Gaza government media office.

Israeli forces, which have deepened their incursions into Rafah, near the border with Egypt, killed four Palestinian policemen and wounded eight others, in an air strike on their vehicle on Saturday, health officials said.

A statement issued by the Hamas-run interior ministry said the four included Fares Abdel-Al, the head of the police force in western Rafah neighbourhood of Tel Al-Sultan.

The Israeli military said forces continued “intelligence-base operations” in Rafah, destroyed several underground structures, seized weapons and equipment, and killed several Palestinian gunmen.

Israel said its operations in Rafah aimed to eradicate the last Hamas armed wing battalions.

In the central Al-Nuseirat camp, one of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps, an Israeli air strike on a house killed 10 Palestinians, medics said.

The Israeli military said it eliminated a Hamas rocket cell that operated from inside a humanitarian-designated area. It said it carried out a precise strike after taking measures to ensure civilians were unharmed. Hamas denies Israeli accusations it uses civilian properties for military purposes.

The armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said fighters attacked Israeli forces in several areas of the enclave by anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

US top diplomat Antony Blinken said Monday he was “hopeful” Hamas would accept the latest proposal for a long-sought Gaza truce and hostage release deal as negotiators from the Palestinian group were due in Egypt.

Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and Hamas for months, and a recent flurry of diplomacy appeared to suggest a new push towards halting the fighting.

Talks “are taking place in Cairo today”, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services. 

It was not clear whether the Hamas delegation had already arrived, but Qatari mediators were also in Cairo according to a source with knowledge of the talks.

A senior Hamas official said Sunday the Palestinian militant group had no “major issues” with the most recent truce plan.

Blinken — on his seventh visit to the region since the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war — told a World Economic Forum meeting in Saudi Arabia he was “hopeful” Hamas would accept a truce.

“Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel,” Blinken said, urging the group to “decide quickly”.

“I’m hopeful that they will make the right decision.”

Speaking at the same meeting, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said “the proposal has taken into account the positions of both sides.”

While there was no “final decision” yet, Shoukry said: “We are hopeful… I hope that all will rise to the occasion.”

The war has brought the besieged Gaza Strip to the brink of famine, UN and humanitarian aid groups say, reduced much of the territory to rubble and raised fears of a wider regional conflict.

In southern Gaza, an AFP correspondent, witnesses and rescuers reported air strikes overnight on Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have sought refuge near the border with Egypt.

At least 22 people were killed in the city, medics and the Civil Defence agency said, with witnesses telling AFP at least three houses had been hit.

– ‘Living in hell’ –

A Hamas source close to the talks has told AFP the group is keen for a deal that “guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (a prisoner-hostage) exchange and an end to the siege” in Gaza.

In Israel, protesters have demanded that the government secure the release of the 129 hostages estimated to remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.

They were seized during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war and resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

The tally includes at least 34 deaths in the past 24 hours, a ministry statement on Monday said.

Israel has pledged to pursue Hamas battalions in Rafah despite mounting global concern for civilians sheltering there, but Foreign Minister Israel Katz said the government may “suspend” the invasion if an agreement is reached.

Blinken reaffirmed US opposition to the planned Israeli offensive.

“We have not yet seen a plan that gives us confidence that civilians can be effectively protected,” he said.

High temperatures in crowded Rafah have turned makeshift shelters made from plastic tarps into sweltering ovens.

“We’re living in hell,” said displaced Palestinian Hanane Saber, 41.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, has said that “as the weather gets warmer, the risk of disease spreading increases”, a threat exacerbated by uncleared rubbish.

According to the Hamas source, the latest plan proposes an Israeli withdrawal from two main roads through the coastal territory to allow Gazans to return to the heavily impacted north.

Hamas negotiator Zaher Jabareen told AFP that “success or failure” will be determined by “the ability to reach a permanent ceasefire decision” — a condition Israel has rejected before — and to agree “clear” plans for reconstruction of war-battered Gaza.

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

– Hostage release talks –

As diplomatic efforts intensified, a State Department official said Blinken will also travel to Israel and neighbouring Jordan later this week.

His Saudi counterpart, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan, said Sunday the international “political system” had failed in its response to the “catastrophe” in Gaza.

Prince Faisal told the WEF summit that only “a credible, irreversible path to a Palestinian state” will prevent the world from confronting “this same situation” again in the future.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government has rejected calls for Palestinian statehood.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, appealed at the WEF meeting for the United States to stop Israel from invading Rafah, which he said would be “the biggest disaster in the history of the Palestinian people”.

In February, Netanyahu said any truce deal would only delay — not prevent — a Rafah operation.

War cabinet member Benny Gantz said that “Rafah is important in the long struggle against Hamas” but also that the Israeli government “will not have the right… to exist” if it blocks a deal to free the captives.

Media reports said the Israeli government had authorised its negotiators to discuss the initial release of fewer than the 40 hostages it had previously demanded during the first phase of a truce.

US President Joe Biden spoke with Netanyahu by phone Sunday about the truce negotiations and “increases in the delivery of humanitarian assistance into Gaza”, the White House said.

They discussed “preparations” to open new crossings to northern Gaza, where conditions have been particularly dire, it added.

Elsewhere, Hamas’s armed wing claimed a barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon at a military position in northern Israel, though the military reported no casualties or damage.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

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.

Palestinian Territories:

American, Israeli, and Hamas negotiators are expected in Cairo over the weekend in a renewed push for a ceasefire and hostage release deal in a war that reaches the half-year mark on Sunday.

Egypt’s Al-Qahera News said CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani would join Egyptian mediators for Sunday’s indirect talks between the Israeli and Hamas delegations.

Ahead of the talks, Hamas confirmed its core demands — a complete ceasefire in Gaza and withdrawal of Israeli forces.

The ceasefire attempt comes after Israel’s military made a rare admission of wrongdoing and said it was firing two officers over the killing of seven aid workers in Gaza where humanitarians say famine is imminent. The admission did not quell calls for an independent probe, however.

The deaths of the workers from US-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) on April 1 led to a tense call between US President Joe Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Biden urged an “immediate ceasefire” and for the first time hinted at conditioning US support for Israel on curtailing the killing of civilians and improving humanitarian conditions.

The bloodiest-ever Gaza war began on October 7 with an unprecedented attack from Gaza by Hamas operatives resulting in the death of 1,170 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, Israeli figures show.

Palestinian operatives also took around 250 Israeli and foreign hostages, about 130 of whom remain in Gaza, including more than 30 the army says are dead.

Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has relentlessly bombarded the territory, killing at least 33,137 people, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Iran vows revenge

The UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths decried Israel’s war against Hamas and called for a “collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity”.

Fears that the war could spread intensified after Iran vowed retaliation after seven Revolutionary Guards were killed in an air strike Monday on the consular annex of its embassy in Damascus.

Ahead of the weekend talks, Biden wrote to the leaders of Egypt and Qatar urging them to secure commitments from Hamas to “agree to and abide by a deal”, a senior administration official told AFP. 

Stop-start talks have made no headway since a week-long truce in November saw some hostages exchanged for Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel.

The White House confirmed negotiations would occur this weekend in Cairo, and Hamas said its delegation would head there on Sunday.

But Hamas also restated its key demands.

“Hamas confirms its adherence to the position it presented on March 14 … and we will not back down from this position,” a statement said.

“The demands … are complete ceasefire, withdrawal of the occupation forces from Gaza, the return of the displaced to their residential areas, freedom of movement of the people, offering them aid and shelter, and a serious hostage exchange deal,” it said.

Biden’s Thursday call with Netanyahu included discussions on “empowering his negotiators” to reach a deal, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.

Washington blames the lack of a deal on Hamas’s refusal to release sick and other vulnerable hostages. Qatar has said Israeli objections to the return of displaced Gazans are the main holdup.

Biden is under pressure over massive US military aid to Israel which, so far, Washington has not leveraged despite increasingly critical comments about Israel’s conduct of the war.

The Israeli military announced it was firing two officers after finding a series of errors led to the drone strikes that killed the WCK workers.

WCK said its Gaza operations remain suspended after the attack, while other global aid groups said relief work in the territory has become almost impossible.

‘Criminal’

The army said a commander “mistakenly assumed” Hamas had seized the aid vehicles, which were moving at night.

Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Saturday Canberra had “not yet received sufficient information” from Israel about the death of Lalzawmi “Zomi” Frankcom and the other aid workers.

“It cannot be brushed aside and it cannot be covered over,” Wong said.

WCK said Israel “cannot credibly investigate its own failure in Gaza”. Britain called for a “wholly independent review”, while Poland sought a “criminal” probe.

Hours after Biden and Netanyahu spoke, Israel announced it would allow “temporary” aid deliveries through Ashdod port and the Erez border crossing.

UN chief Antonio Guterres called for a “paradigm shift” rather than “scattered measures”.

‘Dying from hunger’

Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Defence agency, told AFP on Saturday that aid reaching Gaza is “absolutely not sufficient” for its 2.4 million people, with basic necessities “extremely scarce” particularly in the north.

“Children are dying from hunger” there, he said.

Around 1.5 million Gazans are sheltering in the territory’s far south, in Rafah.

“We are ordinary citizens and human beings,” Siham Achur, 50, said in the tent that is now her family’s home. “Why did they bomb our house?”

They had lived in Khan Yunis for 30 years, Achur said, but those memories “have become dust”.

On Saturday, Israel’s military said warplanes had killed Akram Salamah, a “senior” operative it said held several positions including Hamas’s deputy chief for Khan Yunis.

Troops also recovered from Khan Yunis the body of Elad Katzir, who was kidnapped on October 7 and “murdered in captivity” by Islamic Jihad, a group fighting alongside Hamas, the army said.

The Israeli ambassador to Warsaw, Yacov Livne, said on social media that Katzir had dual citizenship with Poland. The Polish foreign ministry said it had received news of his death with “sadness”.

His sister Carmit Palty Katzir blamed the Israeli authorities for Elad’s death, saying he would have returned alive had the authorities agreed to a new truce.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

The United States has made a “bridging proposal” for the number of jailed Palestinians to be released by Israel in exchange for every hostage freed by Hamas in any new Gaza truce, an Israeli official briefed on the Qatar-hosted talks said on Saturday.

An Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea has been in Doha for indirect negotiations with the Palestinian group Hamas, which CIA director William Burns is helping Qatari and Egyptian officials to mediate.

Hamas wants to parlay any deal into a permanent end to the fighting – short of a formal peace, as the Islamist group is sworn to Israel’s destruction. Israel plans to pursue the war until Hamas’s governing and military capacities are dismantled.

“During the negotiations, significant gaps came to light on the question of the ratio” of prisoners to be released for each of the 40 hostages whose potential recovery is under discussion, said an Israeli official, who requested anonymity.

“The United States put a bridging proposal on the table, to which Israel responded positively. Hamas’ response is pending.”

The official provided no details on the US proposal.

The US embassy in Israel did not immediately comment.

Asked about the hostage-to-prisoner ratio, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri referred Reuters to a proposal made by the group this month under which Israel would free between 700 and 1,000 jailed Palestinians in return for female, minor, elderly and infirm captives. Israel called that “unrealistic”.

Abu Zuhri noted Israel’s refusal to agree to call off its offensive, withdraw forces and allow displaced Palestinians to return to homes in the northern Gaza Strip: scenes of some of the most intense fighting in the almost six-month-old conflict.

“What America and the Occupation (Israel) want is to regain the captives without a commitment to end the aggression, which means the resumption of war, killing and destruction, and we can’t accept that,” Abu Zuhri said.

US President Joe Biden, echoing Israel, has said Hamas must be eliminated.

Israel has expressed openness to suspending its offensive for six weeks and allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza in return for the 40 hostages. That would leave behind 90 hostages, out of 253 seized by Hamas in its Oct. 7 cross-border rampage that sparked the war.

Under a previous truce, in late November, Israel released three jailed Palestinians, most of them young and accused of relatively light offences, for every hostage freed by Hamas, totalling 300 Palestinian prisoners for around 100 hostages.

Israeli officials have said they will likely have to agree to the release of a larger number of more senior Palestinian operatives this time around.

Barnea flew back with other senior members of Israel’s delegation on Saturday evening, the Israeli official said, adding that their teams remain in Doha. The principals were prepared to shuttle back if the negotiations gain momentum, the official added.

The Hamas armed wing said on Saturday that an Israeli hostage had died due to “lack of medicine and food”.

Israeli officials have generally declined to respond to such announcements, accusing Hamas of psychological warfare. But Israel has itself declared 35 of the hostages dead in captivity.

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