Violence has subsided but not stopped since the Gaza truce ‌took effect on October 10, and ‌the sides have regularly accused each other of violating the ceasefire. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel received the remains of two more hostages on Wednesday (October 15, 2025), hours after the Israeli military said that one of the bodies previously turned over was not that of a hostage. The confusion added to tensions over the fragile truce that has paused the two-year war.

The remains were transferred by the Red Cross from Hamas. After the two coffins arrived in Israel, the military in a statement cautioned that the hostages’ identities had yet to be verified.

Meanwhile, the Gaza Health Ministry said it received 45 more bodies of Palestinians from Israel, another step in implementation of the ceasefire agreement. That brought to 90 the total number of bodies returned to Gaza for burial. The forensics team examining the remains said they showed signs of mistreatment.

As part of the deal, four bodies of hostages were handed over by Hamas on Tuesday, following four on Monday that were returned hours after the last 20 living hostages were released from Gaza. In all, Israel has been awaiting the return of the bodies of 28 hostages.

The Israeli military said forensic testing showed that “the fourth body handed over to Israel by Hamas does not match any of the hostages”. There was no immediate word on whose body it was.

In exchange for the release of the hostages, Israel freed around 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees on Monday.

Unidentified bodies returned to Gaza show signs of abuse

Israel is expected to turn over more bodies, though officials have not said how many are in its custody or how many will be returned. It is unclear whether the remains belong to Palestinians who died in Israeli custody or were taken from Gaza by Israeli troops. Throughout the war, Israel’s military has exhumed bodies as part of its search for the remains of hostages.

As forensic teams examined the first remains returned, the Health Ministry on Wednesday released images of 32 unidentified bodies to help families recognise missing relatives.

Many appeared decomposed or burned. Some were missing limbs or teeth, while others were coated in sand and dust. Health officials have said Israeli restrictions on allowing DNA-testing equipment into Gaza have often forced morgues to rely on physical features and clothing for identification.

The forensics team that received the bodies said some arrived still shackled or bearing signs of physical abuse.

Sameh Hamad, a member of a commission tasked with receiving the bodies at Khan Younis’ Nasser Hospital, said some arrived with their hands and legs cuffed.

“There are signs of torture and executions,” he told The Associated Press.

The bodies, he said, belonged to men aged 25 to 70. Most had bands on their necks, including one that had a rope around the neck.

Most of the bodies wore civilian clothing, but some were in uniforms, suggesting they were militants.

Hamad said the Red Cross provided names for only three of the dead, leaving many families uncertain of their relatives’ fate. The fighting has killed nearly 68,000 Palestinians, according to the Health Ministry, which is part of the Hamas-run government in Gaza. The ministry maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by U.N. agencies and independent experts.

Thousands more are missing, according to the Red Cross and Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

Rasmiya Qudeih, 52, waited outside Nasser Hospital, hoping her son would be among the 45 bodies transferred from Israel on Wednesday.

He vanished on October 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas-led attack that triggered the war. She was told he was killed by an Israeli strike.

“God willing, he will be with the bodies,” she said.

Netanyahu says Israel won’t compromise

The ceasefire plan introduced by US President Donald Trump had called for all hostages – living and dead – to be handed over by a deadline that expired on Monday. But under the deal, if that did not happen, Hamas was to share information about deceased hostages and try to hand them over as soon as possible.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel “will not compromise” and demanded that Hamas fulfil the requirements laid out in the ceasefire deal about the return of hostages’ bodies.

Trump, in an interview with CNN, warned that Israel could resume the war if he feels Hamas is not upholding its end of the agreement.

“Israel will return to those streets as soon as I say the word,” Trump said.

Hamas’ armed wing said in a statement on Wednesday that the group honoured the ceasefire’s terms and handed over the remains of the hostages it had access to.

Hamas and the Red Cross have said that recovering the remains was a challenge because of Gaza’s vast destruction, and Hamas has told mediators that some bodies are in areas controlled by Israeli troops.

This is not the first time Hamas has returned a wrong body to Israel. During a previous ceasefire, the group said it handed over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons — among those taken in Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 abducted.

Testing in February 2025 showed that one of the bodies returned was identified as a Palestinian woman. Bibas’ body was returned a day later.

More aid bound for Gaza

The World Food Programme said its trucks began arriving in Gaza after the entrance of humanitarian aid into Gaza was paused for two days due to the exchange on Monday and a Jewish holiday on Tuesday.

The timing of the scaled-up deliveries – which are part of the ceasefire deal – had been called into question after Israel said on Tuesday that it would cut the number of trucks allowed into Gaza, saying Hamas was too slow to return the hostages’ bodies.

Abeer Etefa, spokesperson for the World Food Programme, lauded the trucks’ passage but said the situation remained unpredictable.

“We are hopeful that access will improve in the coming days,” she said.

The Egyptian Red Crescent said 400 trucks carrying food, fuel and medical supplies were bound for Gaza on Wednesday.

The Israeli defence body overseeing humanitarian aid in Gaza, COGAT, declined to comment on the number of trucks expected to enter Gaza on Wednesday.

“Throughout this crisis, we have insisted that withholding aid from civilians is not a bargaining chip,” UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher said in a statement.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sent a delegation of senior officials to Qatar for negotiations on a hostage release and Gaza ceasefire deal, his office said Saturday.

Netanyahu held a meeting in Jerusalem with US President-elect Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, a representative of current US President Joe Biden and senior Israeli officials, the prime minister’s office said in a statement. 

Following the meeting, Netanyahu instructed the heads of the Mossad spy agency and Shin Bet security agency as well as General Nitzan Alon and foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk “to depart for Doha in order to continue advancing a deal to release our hostages”, the statement said. 

The United States has for more than a year been mediating talks alongside Qatar and Egypt for an end to the war in Gaza alongside the release of hostages.

The announcement was welcomed by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group for those held in Gaza, which called it “a historic opportunity to secure the release of all our loved ones”.

“Leave no stone unturned and return with an agreement that ensures the return of all hostages, down to the last one,” it said in a statement.

Indirect negotiations between Israel and the Islamist militant group Hamas resumed last weekend in Qatar.

The discussions are currently focused on the immediate freeing of hostages taken by the Islamist group during its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.  

Biden, who will leave office on January 20, said on Thursday there had been “real progress” in the talks.

Trump, who will replace Biden, promised “hell to pay” if the hostages were not released by his inauguration.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people on the Israeli side, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

During the attack, Palestinian militants took 251 people hostage, of whom 94 remain in the Gaza Strip, including 34 the Israeli military has declared dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,537 people, the majority civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory considered reliable by the United Nations.

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

Jerusalem:

Israelis and Palestinians are signaling new efforts to forge a ceasefire deal, even a limited one, for the first time in a year that would pause the fighting in Gaza and return to Israel some of the hostages still held in the Palestinian enclave.

Israel Defence Minister Israel Katz told his U.S. counterpart Lloyd Austin in a phone call on Wednesday there was now a chance for a new deal that would allow the return of all the hostages, including US citizens, Mr Katz’s office said.

A Western diplomat in the region, however, said a deal was taking shape, but it would likely be limited in scope, involving the release of only a handful of hostages and a short pause in hostilities.

Such a truce and release would be only the second since the start of the war in October 2023.

The guarded optimism emerges as US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan heads to Israel for talks with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and then to Egypt and Qatar, co-mediators with the US on a deal.

Separately, President-elect Donald Trump has demanded that militants of the Palestinian Hamas group release the hostages held in Gaza before he takes over from Mr Biden on Jan. 20. Otherwise, Mr Trump has said, there will be “hell to pay.”

Mr Trump’s designated hostage envoy Adam Boehler has said he too is involved, having spoken already to Mr Biden and to Mr Netanyahu. Israel says 100 hostages remain captive in Gaza. Seven are believed to be US citizens.

Citing Mr Trump’s threat of “hell to pay,” Boehler told Israel’s Channel 13 news last week: “I would appeal to those people that have taken hostages: Make your best deal now. Make it now because every day that passes, it is going to get harder and harder and more Hamas lives will be lost.”

Although Mr Biden and Mr Trump are working separately, their efforts overlap and both stand to gain from a deal. A US official said Trump’s public statements about the need for a swift ceasefire “have not been harmful.” 

The official said the priority is to get the hostages home, whether it is at the end of the Mr Biden term or the start of the Mr Trump term. 

Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump’s designated Middle East envoy, met separately in late November with Mr Netanyahu and Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, said a source briefed on the talks.

TIMING IS APT FOR NETANYAHU

The timing for a deal may never have been better politically for Mr Netanyahu.

The prime minister told reporters on Monday that Hamas’ increasing isolation following the collapse of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad’s rule opened the door to a possible hostage deal even if it was too early to claim success.

Israel’s military chief and the head of the Shin Bet internal security service were in Cairo on Tuesday to discuss post-war Gaza border crossings and administration, according to three Israeli security sources.

The public optimism of Israeli leaders over the past week has matched the general tone in internal discussions behind closed doors, according to an Israeli official.

For Mr Netanyahu, concessions would be far easier now with Israel having reestablished its reputation as the most powerful Middle East force and its Iran-backed enemies in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria now posing less of a threat.

Mr Netanyahu’s once-fragile coalition has been strengthened by the addition of Foreign Minister Gideon Saar and his more centrist faction. Mr Netanyahu, having achieved a ceasefire with Hezbollah in Lebanon, can complete the picture with the return of the hostages in a deal with Hamas.

Over the past year, some of the far-right ministers in his cabinet had voiced objections, even threatening to bring down the government, should the war in Gaza end. But with Israel’s enemies weakened, and his coalition strengthened, Netanyahu is far less vulnerable politically.

Mr Saar said on Monday that Israel was now more optimistic about a possible hostage deal amid reports Hamas had asked other Gaza factions to help it compile a list of Israeli and foreign hostages in their custody, whether dead or alive.

A Palestinian official close to the talks and familiar with the positions of all the parties involved described what he called “a fever of negotiations” with ideas emerging on all sides, including among mediators in Egypt and Qatar.

Mr Trump’s involvement had given the talks a boost, even if the sides have yet to present lists of Palestinian prisoners and hostages to be exchanged or to complete plans for a temporary or phased truce, the Palestinian official said.

He said Hamas was willing to show some flexibility should there be guarantees Israel would not resume the fighting.

It is unclear how the sides can bridge the largest gap that has persisted through numerous rounds of failed negotiations; Hamas demands an end to the war, while Israel says the war will not end before Hamas no longer rules Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken headed to Jordan and Turkey on Wednesday for talks on Syria, the State Department said. Israel is not in his official itinerary but there is always a possibility he might add the stop.

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

Egypt has proposed an initial two-day ceasefire in Gaza to exchange four Israeli hostages of Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners, Egypt’s president said on Sunday as Israeli military strikes killed 45 Palestinians across the enclave.

Egyptian leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi made the announcement as efforts to defuse the devastating, more than year-long war resumed in Qatar with the directors of the CIA and Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency taking part.

Speaking alongside Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune during a press conference in Cairo, Sisi also said that talks should resume within 10 days of implementing the temporary ceasefire in efforts to reach a permanent one.

There was no immediate comment from Israel or Hamas but a Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters: “I expect Hamas would listen to the new offers, but it remains determined that any agreement must end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza.”

Israel has said the war cannot end until Hamas has been wiped out as a military force and governing entity in Gaza.

The US, Qatar and Egypt have been spearheading negotiations to end the war that erupted after Hamas fighters entered southern Israel on October 7 last year, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

The death count from Israel’s retaliatory air and ground onslaught in Gaza is approaching 43,000, Gaza health officials say, with the densely populated enclave in ruins.

An official briefed on the talks told Reuters earlier on Sunday that negotiations in Doha will seek a short-term ceasefire and the release of some hostages being held by Hamas in exchange for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners.

The objective, still elusive after multiple mediation attempts, is to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a halt in fighting for less than a month in the hope this would lead to a more permanent ceasefire.

At least 43 of those killed in Gaza on Sunday were in the north of the enclave, where Israeli troops have returned to root out Hamas fighters who it says have regrouped there.

‘UNBEARABLE’ CONDITIONS IN NORTH GAZA

The United Nations said the plight of Palestinian civilians in northern Gaza was “unbearable” and the conflict was being “waged with little regard for the requirements of international humanitarian law”.

“The Secretary-General (Antonio Guterres) is shocked by the harrowing levels of death, injury and destruction in the north, with civilians trapped under rubble, the sick and wounded going without life-saving health care, and families lacking food and shelter, amid reports of families being separated and many people detained,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said in a statement.

Israeli authorities were hampering efforts to deliver food, medicine and other essential humanitarian supplies, putting lives at risk, he said. The devastation and deprivation resulting from Israeli military operations in the north were making life there untenable.

Israel says its forces operate in accordance with international law. It says it targets Hamas operatives who conceal themselves among the civilian population which they use as human shields, a charge Hamas denies.

It denies blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza, blaming international organisations for problems distributing it and accusing Hamas of stealing from aid convoys.

JABALIA IN FOCUS

Earlier on Sunday, 20 people were killed following an airstrike on houses in Jabalia, the largest of the Gaza Strip’s eight historic refugee camps, which has been the focus of an Israeli military offensive for more than three weeks, medics and the Palestinian official news agency WAFA said.

Another Israeli airstrike on a school sheltering displaced Palestinian families in Shati camp in Gaza City, killed nine people and wounded 20 others, with many in critical condition, medics said.

Footage circulated on Palestinian media, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed people rushing to the bomb site to help evacuate the casualties. Bodies were scattered on the ground, while some carried wounded children in their arms before loading them in a vehicle.

The Israeli military said it was looking into the report on the strike on the school.

Three local journalists were among those killed at the school in Shati – Saed Radwan, head of digital media at Hamas Al-Aqsa television, Hanin Baroud, and Hamza Abu Selmeya, according to Hamas media.

On Sunday, Israel’s military said it had killed more than 40 militants in the Jabalia area in the past 24 hours, as well as dismantling infrastructure and locating large quantities of military equipment.

Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have so far killed around 800 people during a three-week offensive, the Gaza health ministry said.

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

Balata, West Bank:

Newly freed from an Israeli prison, Wael Masha rode atop friends’ shoulders through the streets of his West Bank refugee camp before bursting into his home to kiss his mother’s feet.

Less than a year later, those friends carried the 18-year-old’s body through the same streets after Israeli forces killed him in an air strike, describing him as an armed militant who posed a threat to Israeli forces.

His journey was not unique: Masha is one of at least three Palestinians born in the Israeli-occupied West Bank who were arrested as teenagers, released during a brief truce in the Gaza war last November, then killed in intensifying Israeli military operations in the territory.

Israel says its raids and air strikes in the West Bank, which it has occupied since 1967, reflect the scope of the security threat it faces from Palestinian combatants.

His family and others like them say Israel is fuelling the problem it claims to be fighting, arresting young men — Masha was 17 when he was taken into custody — then abusing them in custody, ultimately driving them to seek revenge.

What is not in dispute is that Masha embraced “jihad” after his release, and knew where it would lead.

In his will, he instructed his mother: “When you hear the news of my martyrdom, God willing, do not cry, but ululate.”

While some memorial posters show Masha brandishing an automatic weapon, his mother remembers him differently.

“He loved studying and repairing computers and mobile phones,” Hanadi Masha told AFP in the family home in Balata refugee camp, east of Nablus, surrounded by pictures of her smiling son.

Perhaps this interest could have turned into a career, she added.

But “after he got out of prison, he had a grudge because of everything he saw inside”.

‘SHOCK’ BEHIND BARS

The fallout from the nearly year-old war in Gaza has reverberated across the West Bank, where the health ministry says at least 680 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and settlers since Hamas’s October 7 attack.

Israeli officials say 24 Israelis, including troops, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period.

Even before the war, Israeli round-ups of Palestinian men were common, including the one in November 2022 in which Masha was detained.

The Palestinian Prisoners’ Club advocacy group says there are at least 250 Palestinians under the age of 18 currently in Israeli custody.

“The occupation does not hesitate to arrest children under 18 years old… The widespread arrests have nothing to do with any armed action,” said Hilmi al-Araj of the Palestinian civil society group Hurryyat.

Israeli authorities took Masha to Megiddo prison in northern Israel and sentenced him to two and a half years on charges they never disclosed to his family.

His surprise release came during a weeklong truce in Gaza in November 2023, the only one of the war so far, during which Palestinian militants released 105 hostages seized on October 7, the Israelis among them in exchange for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli jails.

Once out, Masha recounted a host of abuses: being instructed to kiss the Israeli flag, being burned with cigarette butts.

His father Bilal said the experience was “a huge shock” that “changed things completely” for him.

“My son entered as a cub and came out as a lion,” he said.

‘PRIME OF LIFE’

Israel has not explained the precise circumstances of Masha’s death, and his parents say they do not know what he was doing when an Israeli strike killed him on August 15.

They only know that the day before the strike Masha said he received a threatening phone call from an Israeli officer warning: “It’s your turn.”

The details are clearer for Tariq Daoud, a second Palestinian teenager who was detained with Masha and released on the same day of the November truce.

Like Masha, Daoud said he was beaten at Megiddo prison, his brother Khaled told AFP at the family home in Qalqilyah, where children wear necklaces featuring his face.

Khaled said the abuse produced false confessions from Tariq — aged 16 when he was arrested — on charges including possessing an illegal firearm and attempting to build explosives.

Incarceration “shattered all his ambitions”, which had included potentially becoming an engineer or a doctor, Khaled said.

Instead he joined Hamas’s armed wing.

In the same week that Masha was killed, Tariq opened fire on an Israeli settler in Azzun, east of Qalqilyah, and Israeli troops shot him dead at the scene, both Khaled and the Israeli military said.

Israeli officials have not yet released his body, but Khaled still visits his plot at the Qalqilyah cemetery every day to water the flowers.

“I go because I feel that there is something of his presence,” Khaled said.

Back in the Balata camp, Masha’s mother Hanadi has found her own ways to honour her son, talking about him with his four younger siblings and stroking pictures of his beard — just like she playfully greeted him when he was alive.

Shortly after Masha’s death, the institute where he had been taking classes told her he had been awarded certificates in mobile phone repair and cybersecurity.

His mother attended the graduation ceremony on his behalf.

“He was a young man in the prime of life,” she told AFP through tears.

His time behind bars “planted the idea of resistance in his head.”
 

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

The Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday efforts to agree to a ceasefire for the Gaza Strip were back at square one after Israel effectively rejected a proposal by international mediators.

Hamas said in a statement it would hold consultations with Palestinian factions to review its strategy for negotiations on halting seven months of war, triggered by its deadly attack on Israel on Oct. 7.

The United Nations warned hours earlier that aid for Gaza could grind to a halt in days after Israel seized control this week of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a vital route for supplies to the devastated Palestinian enclave.

Despite fierce US pressure, Israel has said it will go ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced people have sought refuge and Israeli forces say Hamas militants are hiding.

Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing the eastern and western sections of Rafah on Friday, effectively encircling the eastern part of the city in an assault that has caused Washington to block some military aid to its ally.

Indirect diplomacy has failed to end a war that health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza say has killed almost 35,000 people since the Oct. 7 attack. Some 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 253 taken hostage on Oct. 7, according to Israeli tallies.

Ceasefire talks in Cairo broke up on Thursday with no agreement to halt the fighting and release hostages.

Hamas had said it agreed at the start of the week to a proposal submitted by Qatari and Egyptian mediators that had previously been accepted by Israel. Israel said the Hamas proposal contained elements it cannot accept.

“Israel’s rejection of the mediators’ proposal through the amendments it made returned things to the first square,” Hamas said in Friday’s statement.

“In the light of Netanyahu’s behaviour and rejection of the mediators’ document and the attack on Rafah and the occupation of the crossing, the leadership of the movement will hold consultations with the brotherly leaders of the Palestinian factions to review our negotiation strategy.”

Explosions And Gunfire

Residents described almost constant explosions and gunfire east and northeast of Rafah on Friday, with intense fighting between Israeli forces and militants from Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

Hamas said it ambushed Israeli tanks near a mosque in the east of the city, a sign the Israelis had penetrated several kilometres from the east to the outskirts of the built-up area.

Israel has ordered civilians out of the eastern part of Rafah, forcing tens of thousands of people to seek shelter outside the city, previously the last refuge of more than a million who fled other parts of the enclave during the war.

Israel says it cannot win the war without assaulting Rafah to root out thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are sheltering there. Hamas says it will fight to defend it.

Supplies were already running short and aid operations could halt within days as fuel and food stocks get used up, United Nations aid agencies said.

“For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom of the barrel,” said the UNICEF Senior Emergency Coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young.

Aid agencies say the battle has put hundreds of thousands of already displaced civilians in harm’s way.

“It is not safe, all of Rafah isn’t safe, as tank shells landed everywhere since yesterday,” Abu Hassan, 50, a resident of Tel al-Sultan west of Rafah told Reuters via a chat app.

“I am trying to leave but I can’t afford 2,000 shekels ($540) to buy a tent for my family,” he said. “There is an increased movement of people out of Rafah even from the western areas, though they were not designated as red zones by the occupation.”

Israeli tanks have already sealed off eastern Rafah from the south, capturing and shutting the only crossing between the enclave and Egypt. An advance on Friday to the Salahuddin road that bisects the Gaza Strip completed the encirclement of the “red zone” where they have ordered residents out.

The Israeli military said its forces in eastern Rafah had located several tunnel shafts, and troops backed by an air strike fought at close quarters with groups of Hamas fighters, killing several. It said Israeli jets had hit several sites from which rockets and mortar bombs had been fired towards Israel in recent days.

The prospect of a full assault on Rafah has opened up one of the biggest rifts for generations between Israel and its closest ally the United States, which has blocked shipments of weapons to Israel for the first time since the war began.

Netanyahu said on Thursday Israel would “fight with our fingernails” if it must, and he hoped disagreements with President Joe Biden would be resolved.

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

Hamas announced on May 6 it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari proposal for a ceasefire to halt the seven-month-long war with Israel in Gaza, hours after Israel ordered about 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating from the southern city of Rafah, signalling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent.

There was no immediate comment from Israel on the deal, and details of the proposal have not yet been released. In recent days, Egyptian and Hamas officials have said the cease-fire would take place in a series of stages during which Hamas would release hostages it is holding in exchange for Israeli troop pullbacks from Gaza.

It is not clear whether the deal will meet Hamas’ key demand of bringing about an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal.

Hamas said in a statement its top leader, Ismail Haniyeh, had delivered the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister. After the release of the statement, Palestinians erupted in cheers in the sprawling tent camps around Rafah, hoping the deal meant an Israeli attack had been averted.

Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said that Israel shouldn’t attack Rafah. The looming operation has raised global alarm over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians sheltering there.

Aid agencies have warned that an offensive will worsen Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe and bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory.

U.S. President Joe Biden spoke Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and reiterated U.S. concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said that a cease-fire with Hamas is the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before an official White House statement was released.

Hamas and key mediator Qatar said that invading Rafah will derail efforts by international mediators to broker a cease-fire. Days earlier, Hamas had been discussing a U.S.-backed proposal that reportedly raised the possibility of an end to the war and a pullout of Israeli troops in return for the release of all hostages held by the group. Israeli officials have rejected that trade-off, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.

Netanyahu said Monday that seizing Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensuring the militants can’t rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people were being ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast. He said that Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals.

It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that material was already in place to accommodate the new arrivals.

Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians already are sheltering in Muwasi. The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.

After the evacuation order announcement Monday, Palestinians in Rafah wrestled with having to uproot their extended families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press wanted to risk staying.

Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he had tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation there in October. He ended up suffering through heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.

He’s complying with the order this time, but was unsure now whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza.

“We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.

Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move.

“I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said. “Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.” Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern neighborhoods of Rafah to evacuate, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays “puts themselves and their family members in danger.” Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.

UNRWA won’t evacuate from Rafah so it can continue to provide aid to those who stay behind, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza.

“We will provide aid to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP.

The U.N. says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid keeping Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, a main entry point for aid to Gaza, lies in the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order.

Jan Egeland, secretary-general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced, unlawful” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi.

“The area is already overstretched and devoid of vital services,” Egeland said. He said that an Israeli assault could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.” Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, around two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health officials. The tally doesn’t distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the population of 2.3 million have been driven from their homes, and hundreds of thousands in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the U.N.

Tensions escalated Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza near Israel’s main crossing for delivering humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel shuttered the crossing — but Shoshani said it wouldn’t affect how much aid enters Gaza as others are working.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital.

The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel in which Hamas and other militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted around 250 hostages. After exchanges during a November cease-fire, Hamas is believed to still hold about 100 Israelis captive as well the bodies of around 30 others.

The mediators over the cease-fire — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — had appeared to scramble to salvage a cease-fire deal they had been trying to push through the past week. Egypt said it was in touch with all sides Monday to “prevent the situation from … getting out of control.” CIA Director William Burns, who had been in Cairo for talks on the deal, headed to meet the prime minister of Qatar, an official familiar with the matter said. It wasn’t clear whether a subsequent trip to Israel that had been planned would happen. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.

In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to halt the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will stand alone.” On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by not budging from its demand for an end to the war and a complete Israeli troop withdrawal in return for the hostages’ release, which he called “extreme.”

A man waves a homemade sparkler firework as displaced Palestinians prepare their tents for Ramadan, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip March 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Palestinians prepared for Ramadan in sombre mood with heightened security measures by Israeli police and the spectre of war and hunger in Gaza overshadowing the normally festive Muslim holy month as talks to secure a ceasefire stalled.

Thousands of police have been deployed around the narrow streets of the Old City in Jerusalem, where tens of thousands of worshippers are expected every day at the Al Aqsa mosque compound, one of the holiest sites in Islam.

The area, considered the most sacred place by Jews who know it as Temple Mount, has been a longstanding flashpoint for trouble and was one of the starting points of the last war in 2021 between Israel and Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls Gaza.

That 10-day conflict has been dwarfed by the current war, which is now in its sixth month. It began on Oct. 7 when thousands of Hamas fighters stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, by Israeli tallies.

Israel’s relentless campaign in Gaza has drawn increasing alarm across the world as the growing risk of famine threatens to add to a death toll that has already passed 31,000.

After some confusion last month when hard-right Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said he wanted restrictions on worshippers at Al Aqsa, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the numbers admitted would be similar to last year.

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“This is our mosque and we must take care of it,” said Azzam Al-Khatib, director general of the Jerusalem Waqf, the religious foundation that oversees Al Aqsa. “We must protect the presence of Muslims at this mosque, who should be able to enter in big numbers peacefully and safely.”

Depending on lunar observations, Ramadan will begin on Monday or Tuesday of this week.

But in contrast to previous years, the usual decorations around the Old City have not been put up and there was a similar sombre tone in towns across the occupied West Bank, where around 400 Palestinians have been killed in clashes with security forces, or Jewish settlers since the start of the war.

“We decided this year that the Old City of Jerusalem won’t be decorated out of respect for the blood of our children and the elders and the martyrs,” said Ammar Sider, a community leader in the Old City.

Police said they were working to ensure a peaceful Ramadan and had taken extra measures to crack down on what they described as provocative and distorted information on social media networks and had arrested 20 people suspected of incitement to terrorism.

“The Israel Police will continue to act and allow for the observance of Ramadan prayers safely on the Temple Mount, while maintaining security and safety in the area,” police said in a statement.

For the rest of the Muslim world, Israel’s policing of Al Aqsa has long been among the most bitterly resented issues and last month, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh called on Palestinians to march to the mosque at the start of Ramadan.

Last year, clashes that erupted when police entered the mosque compound, drew condemnation from the Arab League as well as Saudi Arabia, with which Israel had been seeking to normalise diplomatic ties, extending its push to build ties with regional powers including the United Arab Emirates.

Ceasefire hopes

Hopes for a ceasefire, which would have allowed Ramadan to pass peacefully and enabled the return of at least some of the 134 Israeli hostages held in Gaza appear to have been disappointed, with talks in Cairo apparently stalled.

In the ruins of Gaza itself, where half the 2.3 million population is squeezed into the southern city of Rafah, many living under plastic tents and facing a severe shortage of food, the mood was correspondingly sombre.

“We made no preparations to welcome Ramadan because we have been fasting for five months now,” said Maha, a mother of five, who would normally have filled her home with decorations and stocked her refrigerator with supplies for the evening Iftar celebrations when people break their fast.

“There is no food, we only have some canned food and rice, most of the food items are being sold for imaginary high prices,” she said via chat app from Rafah, where she is sheltering with her family.

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In the West Bank, which has seen record violence for more than two years and a further surge since the war in Gaza, the stakes are also high, with volatile towns like Jenin, Tulkarm or Nablus braced for further clashes.

In Israel, fears of car ramming or stabbing attacks by Palestinians, have also led to heightened security preparations.

For many of those waiting, there is little alternative but to hope for peace.

“Ramadan is a blessed month despite the fact this year is not like every year, but we are steadfast and patient, and we will welcome the month of Ramadan as usual, with decorations, songs, with prayers, fasting,” said Nehad El-Jed, who was displaced with her family in Gaza.

“Next Ramadan, we wish for Gaza to come back, hopefully all the destruction and the siege in Gaza will change, and all will come back in a better condition.”