Vice President Kamala Harris. File
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will meet the visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House this week, but will not be able to preside over a joint session of the U.S. Congress which would be addressed by him, according to her aide.

“We anticipate the Vice President will convey her view that it is time for the war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can enjoy their right to dignity, freedom, and self-determination. And they will discuss efforts to reach agreement on the ceasefire deal,” an aide to Vice President Harris told PTI.

Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to address a joint session of the US Congress on July 24. This will be his fourth address to a U.S. Congress, the most that any foreign leader has delivered.

“The Vice President is meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu this week at the White House. This meeting is separate from President Biden’s planned meeting. The Vice President is travelling to Indianapolis on July 24 for a previously scheduled event and will be unable to preside over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s planned address to a joint session of Congress,” the aide said.

House Speaker slams Harris for skipping the joint session

The joint session is normally presided over by the Vice President, but Ms. Harris would not be able to attend this because of her pre-scheduled event in Indianapolis.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, who had invited Mr. Netanyahu for the joint address, slammed Harris for skipping the meeting. “Madam Vice President, you say you want to be the leader of the free world and yet you can’t bring yourself to sit behind our most important strategic ally at this moment. That is not a good look for you. It’s not a good look for America. It’s not a good look for her party that she aims to lead,” he told reporters at a news conference here.

However, Ms. Harris’ aides defended the decision and insisted that not too much be read into the absence. “Her travel to Indianapolis on July 24 should not be interpreted as a change in her position with regard to Israel. This is a statement confirming her travel plans,” her aide told PTI responding to a question on the criticism of this coming from her political opponents.

Harris’ unwavering commitment to Israel’s security

According to the aide, throughout her career, Ms. Harris has had an unwavering commitment to the security of Israel. “That remains true today,” the aide said.

“Since October 7, she has been deeply engaged with Israeli officials as part of our administration’s support for Israel as it works to eliminate the threat of Hamas. She has spoken regularly with President Herzog and met with him once. And she met with then-War Cabinet Member Benny Gantz. She has joined more than 20 calls between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” said the aide.

Ms. Harris has repeatedly condemned Hamas’ brutal attack on October 7 and expressed support for Israel’s right to defend itself. “She has met with families of Americans held hostage and met with former hostages, including just last month, when she met with a former Israeli hostage who survived sexual assault in captivity and hosted an event at the White House that highlighted Hamas’ horrific sexual violence,” the aide said.

“Through her meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu, she will continue her intensive engagement on the conflict in Gaza. We anticipate she will underscore her commitment to ensure Israel can defend itself from threats from Iran and Iranian-backed militias, including Lebanese Hizbullah and Hamas. She will again condemn Hamas’ brutal terrorist attack on October 7, and horrific sexual violence. She will reiterate her deep concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and the loss of innocent life,” the aide said.

“We anticipate the Vice President will convey her view that it is time for the war to end in a way where Israel is secure, all hostages are released, the suffering of Palestinian civilians in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can enjoy their right to dignity, freedom and self-determination. And they will discuss efforts to reach an agreement on the ceasefire deal.”

First diplomatic test

According to The New York Times, in her first week as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Harris will confront the most politically divisive issue in US foreign policy as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel pays an official visit to Washington.

“Netanyahu’s trip throws a spotlight on the views of Ms. Harris, who has emerged as a forceful voice on the Israel-Hamas war, particularly in discussing the plight of innocent Palestinians. In a civil rights speech in Selma, Ala., this year, Ms. Harris garnered widespread attention for calling for an “immediate ceasefire” and assailing Israel for creating a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza,” the daily said.

Mahmoud al-Aloul, Vice Chairman of the Central Committee of Palestinian organisation and political party Fatah, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Mussa Abu Marzuk, a senior member of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, attend an event at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse in Beijing on July 23, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on July 23 hailed an agreement by 14 Palestinian factions to set up an “interim national reconciliation government” to govern Gaza after the war.

Palestinian factions, including Hamas and Fatah, met in Beijing this week in a renewed bid for reconciliation.

As the meeting wrapped up on July 23, China’s top diplomat said the groups had committed to “reconciliation”. “The most prominent highlight is the agreement to form an interim national reconciliation government around the governance of post-war Gaza,” Mr. Wang said, following the signing of the “Beijing declaration” by the factions in the Chinese capital.

“Reconciliation is an internal matter for the Palestinian factions, but at the same time, it cannot be achieved without the support of the international community,” Wang said.

China, he added, was keen to “play a constructive role in safeguarding peace and stability in the Middle East.”

Hamas and Fatah have been bitter rivals since Hamas fighters ejected Fatah from the Gaza Strip after deadly clashes that followed Hamas’s resounding victory in a 2006 election.

The Islamist Hamas movement has ruled Gaza since seizing control of it in 2007.

The secularist Fatah movement controls the Palestinian Authority, which has partial administrative control in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

isk-oho/je/mtp

Washington:

The US military’s problem-plagued mission to deliver aid to Gaza via a temporary pier has ended, a senior American officer said on Wednesday.

“The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there’s no more need to use the pier,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told journalists.

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

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.

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

The Israeli Army dropped thousands of leaflets over Gaza City on July 10 urging all residents to flee a heavy offensive that has rocked the main city of the besieged Palestinian territory.

The leaflets, addressed to “everyone in Gaza City”, set out designated escape routes to the south and warned that the urban area, previously home to more than half a million people, would “remain a dangerous combat zone”.

The warning follows three partial evacuation orders and came as Israeli troops, backed by tanks and aircraft, have fought Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants in the heaviest combat operations the city has seen in months.

In one operation, the Army said it had killed militants and found weapons inside the long-vacated Gaza City headquarters of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

Elsewhere across Gaza, deadly strikes have hit four schools used as shelters in four days, sparking international outrage.

The upsurge in fighting and displacement came as mediator Qatar was due to resume talks on Wednesday toward a truce and hostage release deal to end the war, now grinding on into its 10th month.

An Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea arrived in Doha for the talks, a source with knowledge of the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of their sensitivity.

CIA director William Burns was also expected in the Qatari capital, after holding talks in Cairo on Tuesday.

The latest fighting in Gaza has newly displaced 3,50,000 civilians, said UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini, who spoke before the latest leaflet drop and said “there is absolutely no safe space in Gaza”.

One woman carrying her scant belongings through the bombed-out wasteland, Nimr al-Jamal, told AFP on Tuesday that “this is the 12th time” her family has had to flee.

“How many times can we endure this? A thousand times? Where will we end up?”

Hamas, whose October 7 attack started the war, has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of escalating the fighting to derail the latest ceasefire talks.

Also Read | Israel’s new strikes in Gaza City threaten truce talks: Hamas

The Islamist group’s armed wing said this week the resurgent battles in Gaza City were “the most intense in months”, while deadly strikes have also hit elsewhere across the territory.

Israel’s military said it had “eliminated” Palestinian militants operating from inside the city’s UNRWA headquarters and found “large amounts of weapons” inside.

The U.N. agency’s head of communications Juliette Touma told AFP it was hard to know if people were sheltering in the building “as we don’t have regular access to Gaza City”.

‘Death and misery’

The Israeli Army said it was reviewing an attack on Tuesday in which hospital sources said at least 29 people were killed in a school used as a shelter in the southern Khan Younis area.

Germany said the strike was “unacceptable” and called for a rapid investigation into the incident.

“Civilians, especially children, must not get caught in the crossfire,” the Foreign Ministry posted on X. “The repeated attacks on schools by the Israeli army must stop and an investigation must come quickly.”

Gaza’s Hamas government said a “majority” of the dead were women and children.

AFP footage showed the wounded being rushed to the nearby Nasser hospital, many screaming in pain, as relatives wailed in grief for the dead.

One wounded man, Osama Abu Daqqa, recounted that “suddenly the strike hit, people were injured and martyred and there was no one to help them”.

Also Read | Airstrike kills 25 in southern Gaza as Israeli assault on Gaza City shuts down medical facilities

Another survivor, Mohamed Sukkar, said that “without any warning, rockets were fired at a group of people who were browsing the internet. They were not part of the resistance nor were they armed, they were all civilians.”

The military said that the strike had killed a Hamas “terrorist” who had taken part in the October 7 attack and that it was “looking into the reports that civilians were harmed, adjacent to the Al Awda school”, which it acknowledged was “near the location of the strike”.

“The incident is under review.”

Three previous Israeli strikes since Saturday on Gaza schools used by displaced Palestinians have killed a total of at least 20 people, according to Gaza officials and rescue services.

Mr. Lazzarini wrote on social media site X that “schools have gone from safe places of education and hope for children to overcrowded shelters and often ending up a place of death and misery”.

‘She is alone’

Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza, including 42 the military says are dead.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,295 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Israel has also imposed a punishing siege on Gaza’s 2.4 million people, eased only by sporadic aid deliveries.

Independent U.N. rights experts on Tuesday accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that constituted “a form of genocidal violence”.

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva accused the panel’s members of “spreading misinformation” and “supporting Hamas propaganda”.

Elad Goren of Israel’s COGAT, the military department handling aid to Gaza, said an average of 250 trucks were entering through the Kerem Shalom crossing, half of the daily capacity — a shortfall he blamed on problems on the Palestinian side.

In Israel, meanwhile, protesters have regularly taken to the streets to demand the Netanyahu government strike a deal to bring home the hostages.

Some of the captives’ relatives spoke about their fear, especially of the risk of female captives being abused, at a virtual press conference by the Hostages Families Forum.

“My life stopped on the 7th of October,” said Simona Steinbrecher, mother of the hostage Doron Steinbrecher. “I know she is alone there and I cannot help her.”

Smoke rises from Gaza, amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, near the Israel-Gaza border, as seen from Israel on July 9, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

U.N. rights experts on July 9 accused Israel of carrying out a “targeted starvation campaign” that has resulted in the deaths of children in Gaza.

“Israel’s intentional and targeted starvation campaign against the Palestinian people is a form of genocidal violence and has resulted in famine across all of Gaza,” 10 independent United Nations experts said in a statement.

The U.N. has not officially declared a famine in the Gaza Strip.

But the experts, including the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to food Michael Fakhri, insisted there was no denying famine was under way.

“Thirty-four Palestinians have died from malnutrition since 7 October, the majority being children,” said the experts, who are appointed by the UN Human Rights Council, but who do not speak on behalf of the United Nations.

Also Read | UNICEF finds 90% of Gaza’s children lack food needed for proper growth

Israel’s mission to the U.N. in Geneva slammed the statement, charging that “Mr. Fakhri, and many so-called ‘experts’ who joined (him), are as much accustomed to spreading misinformation, as they are to supporting Hamas propaganda and shielding the terrorist organisation from scrutiny”.

Complicit

The U.N. experts meanwhile listed three children who had recently died “from malnutrition”, after a number of others were said to have starved to death in northern Gaza earlier this year.

Six-month-old Fayez Ataya and 13-year-old Abdulqader Al-Serhi had died on May 30 and June 1 at Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital, while nine-year-old Ahmad Abu Reida died on June 3 in the tent sheltering his displaced family in Khan Yunis, they said.

“With the death of these children from starvation despite medical treatment in central Gaza, there is no doubt that famine has spread from northern Gaza into central and southern Gaza,” they said.

The experts decried that the world had not done more to avert this disaster.

“When a two-month-old baby and 10-year-old Yazan Al Kafarneh died of hunger on 24 February and 4 March respectively, this confirmed that famine had struck northern Gaza,” they said.

“The whole world should have intervened earlier to stop Israel’s genocidal starvation campaign and prevented these deaths.”

“Inaction is complicity.”

Gaza has been facing a deep humanitarian crisis since the war erupted following Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

In response, Israel has carried out a military offensive that has killed at least 38,243 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory.

‘Starvation warfare’

The World Health Organization said Tuesday that 60 cases of severe acute malnutrition, also known as severe wasting —the most deadly form of malnutrition — had been detected last week at the Kamal Adwan paediatric hospital in the north of the Strip.

The U.N. has long been warning of looming famine, especially in the north, but one has not been officially declared.

Also Read | The politics of humanitarian aid

The Israeli mission highlighted Tuesday that the latest assessment by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) partnership determined that famine had not materialised after aid access improved somewhat.

“Israel has continuously scaled up its coordination and assistance in the delivery of humanitarian aid across the Gaza Strip,” it said, claiming Hamas “intentionally steal and hide aid from civilians”.

Hamas authorities meanwhile issued a statement Tuesday describing a “humanitarian catastrophe and escalating famine”.

They accused “the terrorist Israeli government” of continuing “its policy of starvation”, and “preventing the entry of food aid trucks for the 64th consecutive day”.

“Continued starvation warfare threatens a humanitarian disaster and further loss of innocent children,” that statement warned.

Israeli forces advanced deeper into the Gaza Strip’s largest city in pursuit of militants who had regrouped there, sending thousands of Palestinians fleeing on July 8 from an area ravaged in the early weeks of the nine-month-long war.

Hamas warned that the latest raids and displacement in Gaza City could lead to the collapse of long-running negotiations over a ceasefire and hostage release, after the two sides had appeared to have narrowed the gaps in recent days.

Israeli troops were again battling militants in areas that the Army said had been largely cleared months ago in northern Gaza. The military ordered evacuations ahead of the raids, but Palestinians said nowhere feels safe. Most of the population of 2.3 million has been displaced, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are packed into sweltering tent camps.

Also Read | Israel targets Gaza school for second day, killing four

Israel ordered the evacuation of northern Gaza in the first weeks of the war and has prevented most people from returning. But hundreds of thousands of Palestinians remain, living in shelters or the shells of homes.

“We fled in the darkness amid heavy strikes,” said Sayeda Abdel-Baki, a mother of three who had sheltered with relatives in the Daraj neighborhood. “This is my fifth displacement.”

Residents reported artillery and tank fire, as well as airstrikes. Gaza’s Health Ministry, with limited access to the north, did not immediately report casualties.

Israel issued additional evacuation orders for areas in other neighborhoods of central Gaza City. The military said it had intelligence showing that militants from Hamas and the smaller Islamic Jihad group were in the area, and called on residents to head south to the city of Deir al-Balah.

Israel accuses Hamas and other militants of hiding among civilians. In Shijaiyah, a Gaza City neighborhood that has seen weeks of fighting, the military said troops raided and destroyed schools and a clinic that had been converted into militant compounds.

The war has decimated large swaths of urban landscape and sparked a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel and Hamas seem to be the closest they have been in months to agreeing to a cease-fire deal that would pause the fighting in exchange for the release of dozens of hostages captured by Hamas in the Oct. 7 attack that triggered the war.

CIA Director William Burns returned to the region Monday for talks in Cairo, according to Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV, which is close to the security services. An Israeli delegation was also heading to the Egyptian capital, Israeli media reported.

But obstacles remain, even after Hamas agreed to relent on its key demand that Israel commit to ending the war as part of any agreement. A key part of that shift, officials told AP, is the level of destruction caused by Israel’s rolling offensive.

Hamas still wants mediators to guarantee that negotiations conclude with a permanent cease-fire, according to two officials with knowledge of the talks. The current draft says the mediators — the United States, Qatar and Egypt — “will do their best” to ensure that negotiations lead to an agreement to wind down the war.

Israel has rejected any deal that would force it to end the war with Hamas intact — a condition Netanyahu reiterated Sunday.

Hamas on Monday said it is “offering flexibility and positivity” to facilitate a deal, while accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “putting more obstacles in the way of negotiations.”

Meanwhile, Hamas’ top political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, warned mediators of “catastrophic consequences” if Israel continued its operations in Gaza City, saying Netanyahu and the army would bear “full responsibility” for the collapse of the talks, the group said in a subsequent statement.

The two officials said there’s also an impasse around whether Hamas can choose the high-profile prisoners held by Israel that it wants released in exchange for hostages. Some prisoners were convicted of killing Israelis, and Israel does not want Hamas to determine who is released. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media.

Inside Gaza, residents saw no end to their suffering.

Maha Mahfouz fled her home with her two children and many neighbors in Gaza City’s Zaytoun neighborhood. She said their area was not included in the latest evacuation orders but “we are panicked because the bombing and gunfire are very close to us.”

Fadel Naeem, the director of the Al-Ahli hospital, said patients fled the facility even though there was no evacuation order for the surrounding area. He said those in critical condition had been evacuated to other hospitals in northern Gaza.

Marwan al-Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital, said it received 80 patients and wounded people from Al-Ahli who were packed into “every corner.”

“Many cases require urgent surgeries. Many cases suffer from direct shots in the head and require intensive care. Fuel and medical supplies are dwindling,” he said in a text message. He said the hospital also received 16 bodies of people killed in the Israeli incursion, half of them women and children.

Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesman for the Civil Defense first responders who operate under the Hamas-run government, said the neighborhoods of Tufah, Daraj and Shijaiyah had become inaccessible because of Israeli bombing. In a voice message, he said the military shelled houses in Gaza City’s Jaffa area and first responders “saw people lying on the ground and were not able to retrieve them.”

The war has killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

Hamas’ cross-border raid on October 7 killed 1,200 people in southern Israel, most of them civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The militants took roughly 250 people hostage. About 120 are still in captivity, with about a third said to be dead.

Beirut, Lebanon:

Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement said on Sunday it launched its “largest” air operation, sending explosive drones at a mountaintop Israeli military intelligence base in the annexed Golan Heights.

It is the latest incident among escalating cross-border exchanges of fire that have triggered global alarm.

Hezbollah, an Iran-backed Hamas ally, has traded almost daily fire with Israeli forces since the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack on Israel triggered war in the Gaza Strip.

Announcing “the largest operation” carried out by its aerial forces, Hezbollah said in a statement that its fighters sent “multiple, successive squadrons of drones to target the reconnaissance centre” on Mount Hermon.

The Israeli military said an explosive drone “fell in an open area in the Mount Hermon area” but there were “no injuries”.

Attacks as well as rhetoric have escalated in recent weeks, spurring fears of an all-out conflict between Israel and Hezbollah which last went to war in 2006.

The Lebanese movement said the drone attack was part of its “response” to the killing of an operative in a strike Saturday deep into east Lebanon around 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the border.

The Mount Hermon attack targeted intelligence systems, “destroying them and starting a major fire”, Hezbollah said.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant visited troops on Mount Hermon earlier on Sunday, his office said.

In two additional statements, the military said its air defences “successfully intercepted” several “aerial targets” that crossed from Lebanon after sirens sounded in the Golan Heights area.

Israel seized the Golan Heights from Syria in 1967 and later annexed it in a move largely unrecognised by the international community.

The Israeli strike on Saturday killed “a key operative in Hezbollah’s Aerial Defence Unit”, the military has said.

Throughout Sunday, Hezbollah announced four more attacks on Israeli military sites across the border with barrages of rockets as well as some guided missiles. Israeli authorities reported four wounded.

Gallant, in a video from Mount Hermon, said that “even if there is a ceasefire” in Gaza, “we will continue fighting and doing everything necessary to bring about the desired result” in the campaign against Hezbollah.

The cross-border violence has killed at least 497 people in Lebanon, mostly fighters but also including 95 civilians, according to an AFP tally.

On the Israeli side, at least 16 soldiers and 11 civilians have been killed, according to the authorities.

Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from the border areas in both southern Lebanon and northern Israel.

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

Separate Israeli airstrikes killed at least six people in central Gaza, including two children at a home and at least one United Nations worker, Palestinian hospital officials and first responders said, even as stalled cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas show signs of renewed momentum.

Four out of every five people in Gaza — nearly 2 million Palestinians — have been driven into the territory’s center by expanding Israeli military offensives and evacuation orders, the army estimated earlier this week. Civilians are taking shelter in makeshift tent camps and crowded urban areas, and many have been displaced multiple times.

Violence also flared Friday in the occupied West Bank, where Israeli forces killed seven people in a raid and an airstrike, according to Palestinian health officials. And on the Israel-Lebanon border, rockets fired by militant group Hezbollah lightly wounded two Israeli soldiers, the army said, as concerns grow that these low-level clashes could escalate into a wider regional war.

An Israeli strike near the Maghazi refugee camp killed three adults and injured several others on Salah al-Din road, a major thoroughfare in Gaza, according to witnesses and officials at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah. At least one of the dead was wearing a U.N. vest when brought to the hospital.

An adult and two kids were also killed by a strike in the Nuseirat refugee camp, officials at the hospital said. That strike hit a home, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense rescue service.

Ambulances blared their horns as they rolled up to the medical center’s doors Friday evening, unloading the three bodies wrapped in thick household blankets. Laid out in the morgue, an Associated Press journalist observed the man’s bloodstained blue-and-white vest of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

At least one wounded man was also wearing a UNRWA vest. “Stand back a little, guys!” a man in a green medical uniform told a small crowd that gathered beside the ambulance. “Thank God you’re safe,” another man said as the wounded worker was brought inside.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the strikes. Israel blames civilian deaths on Hamas, saying militants operate among the population. Hamas denies the claim and accuses Israel of recklessly bombing civilians.

Around 250,000 people were affected earlier in the week by an Israeli order to evacuate half of the southern city of Khan Younis and a wide swath of the surrounding area. Most Palestinians seeking safety are either heading to an Israeli-declared “safe zone” centered on a coastal area called Muwasi, or the nearby city of Deir al-Balah, said the head of the U.N. humanitarian office for the Palestinian territories, Andrea De Domenico, on Wednesday.

A team of Israeli negotiators will resume talks next week on a cease-fire and hostage exchange deal with Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Friday, signaling progress toward a deal to end the war in Gaza after negotiations appeared stuck for weeks.

The brief Israeli statement came hours after Hamas said its proposed amendments to a U.S. plan for a cease-fire “have been met with a positive response by the mediators.” The Palestinian militant group said Friday there was no set date for negotiations, and said Israel’s official position wasn’t yet known.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office said negotiators will emphasize to American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators that “there are still gaps between the parties” during talks in Doha, Qatar’s capital.

The main sticking point in the three-phase deal appears to be getting from the first to the second phase. Hamas is concerned that Israel will restart the war after the first phase, perhaps after making unrealistic demands in the talks. Israeli officials have expressed concern that Hamas will do the same, drawing out the talks and the initial cease-fire indefinitely without releasing the remaining hostages.

Away from the negotiating table, senior Hamas officials met with Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, as well as the leader of the Islamic Group. Hamas said officials also met Friday with senior delegations from the Houthi rebels in Yemen and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq.

And in Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone with his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Gallant, in which they discussed regional security challenges and Austin expressed support for ongoing diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict in Gaza.

Palestinian authorities say seven people were killed Friday during an Israeli military operation in an area of the West Bank city of Jenin, a known militant stronghold, where the Israeli military said it carried out “counterterrorism activity” that included an airstrike.

Israeli soldiers “encircled a building where terrorists have barricaded themselves in” and the soldiers exchanged fire with those inside, while an airstrike “struck several armed terrorists” in the area.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said a total of seven people were killed, but did not specify whether they died in the exchange of fire or the airstrike. The Islamic Jihad militant group named four of the dead as its members.

Violence has spiraled in the West Bank since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza, sparked by the Oct. 7 raid into southern Israel by Hamas militants who killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 200 others as hostages.

The Palestinian Health Ministry says over 500 Palestinians have since been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank. Most were killed during Israeli raids and violent protests. The dead also include bystanders and Palestinians killed in attacks by Jewish settlers.

In Gaza, Israeli bombardments and ground offensives have so far killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s Health Ministry says. The ministry does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count, but it includes thousands of women and children.

Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order have curtailed humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine. The top U.N. court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.

Israeli forces bombed and battled Hamas in Gaza City on Wednesday as tens of thousands of Palestinians scrambled for a safe haven after the army issued an evacuation order for a vast swathe of the territory’s south.

Apache helicopters and Israeli quadcopter drones flew above Gaza City’s Shujaiya district as heavy gunfire echoed through the streets, AFP reporters said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a US media report saying his generals were urging a Gaza truce even with Hamas undefeated, stressing on Tuesday that “this will not happen”.

Military chief Herzi Halevi meanwhile said Israel is engaged in “a long campaign” to destroy Hamas over the October 7 attack and to bring home the hostages held by Palestinian militants.

The United Nations warned that the almost nine-month-old war had “unleashed a maelstrom of human misery” and that the latest evacuation order had plunged yet more Palestinians into “an abyss of suffering”.

Ten days after Netanyahu said the war’s “intense phase” was winding down, the Israeli military again rained down air strikes and artillery fire on militants in the Shujaiya district.

The air force struck “over 50 terror infrastructure sites” across Gaza in 24 hours while ground troops “eliminated terrorists”, located tunnels and found weapons including AK-47 assault rifles, the military said.

Thousands have fled the fighting in Shujaiya, among them Umm Bashar al-Jamal, 42, who was now sheltering in Gaza City’s Yarmouk sports stadium.

“We were displaced five days ago,” she said. “We fled from Shujaiya. We woke up to the sound of tanks. The houses were bulldozed. All our homes!”

The Israeli army — which issued an evacuation order for Shujaiya a week ago — on Monday did the same for a larger area near Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south, raising fears of renewed heavy battles there.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have again taken to the road, many bundling their scant belongings on top of cars or donkey carts as they sought safety elsewhere in the bombed-out wasteland.

– ‘Lives upended’ –

The UN agency supporting Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said 250,000 people had been affected by the latest evacuation order that covers southern areas bordering Israel and Egypt.

Almost all patients in the European Gaza Hospital and the Red Cross field hospital decided to flee following the evacuation order, the World Health Organization said.

Though the European Gaza Hospital itself is not under evacuation instructions, the order has impacted operations.

“Now only three patients remain at the European Gaza Hospital and three at the ICRC field hospital,” the WHO said, citing figures from Tuesday.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s spokesman Stephane Dujarric said the southern evacuation order covers 117 square kilometres (45 square miles), “making it the largest such order since October”.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Gaza, Sigrid Kaag, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday that the war had now displaced 80 percent of Gaza’s population.

She also said not enough aid was reaching the besieged territory and that crossings must be reopened, particularly to southern Gaza, to avert a humanitarian disaster.

“Palestinian civilians in Gaza have been plunged into an abyss of suffering, their home lives shattered, their lives upended,” she said. “The war has not merely created the most profound of humanitarian crises. It has unleashed a maelstrom of human misery.”

Amid the war, siege and mass displacement, more than 150,000 people have contracted skin diseases in the squalid conditions, the World Health Organization said.

Wafaa Elwan, a Palestinian mother of seven who now lives in a tent city, said: “We sleep on the ground, on sand where worms come out underneath us.”

She said her five-year-old son, much of whose body was covered in rashes and welts, “can’t sleep through the night because he can’t stop scratching his body”.

– ‘Winds of defeatism’ –

The bloodiest ever Gaza war broke out after Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also seized 251 hostages, 116 of whom remain in Gaza including 42 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 37,953 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

The Israeli military said Wednesday that “operational activities continue throughout the Gaza Strip”.

The Gaza civil defence agency said seven people were killed when a strike hit a family house north of Gaza City.

Another strike killed three people in a car at Al-Maghazi refugee camp in the central Deir al-Balah area, an AFP reporter said.

The New York Times has quoted Israeli security officials as saying top generals see a truce as the best way to secure the release of the remaining hostages, even if that meant not achieving all of the war goals.

Netanyahu strongly rejected this and vowed Israel would not give in to the “winds of defeatism”.

“The war will end once Israel achieves all of its objectives, including the destruction of Hamas and the release of all of our hostages,” he said.