Palestinian children inspect the site of an Israeli strike on a house in Rafah. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Hamas is suggesting during ceasefire negotiations that an independent government of non-partisan figures run post-war Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, a member of the Palestinian Islamist movement’s political bureau said Friday.

“We proposed that a non-partisan national competency government manage Gaza and the West Bank after the war”, Hossam Badran said in a statement about the ongoing negotiations between Israel and Hamas with mediation from Qatar, Egypt, and the United States. “The administration of Gaza after the war is a Palestinian internal matter without any external interference, and we will not discuss the day after the war in Gaza with any external parties”, Mr. Badran added.

A Hamas official told AFP the proposal for a non-partisan government was made “with the mediators”.

The government will “manage the affairs of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the initial phase after the war, paving the way for general elections” said the official, who did not want his name disclosed.

Mr. Badran’s remarks came after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanded that Israel retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, Gaza territory along the border with Egypt. This condition conflicts with Hamas’s position that Israel must withdraw from all Gaza territory after a ceasefire.

Mr. Netanyahu said on Thursday that control of the Philadelphi corridor is part of efforts to prevent “weapons to be smuggled to Hamas from Egypt.”

The negotiations are occurring in Doha, Qatar and Cairo, Egypt with the aim of bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza as well as the return of hostages still held there by Hamas.

The war began on October 7 with Hamas’s unprecedented attack on southern Israel that 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 military says are dead.

Israel responded with a military offensive that has killed at least 38,345 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to data from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.

New Delhi:

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) used the ‘Hannibal directive’ during the Hamas attack on October 7, Haaretz, a leading daily, has reported. This directive allows soldiers to use force to prevent kidnappings, even if it puts the lives of hostages at risk, it said.

What is the Hannibal directive? 

The Hannibal Directive is a controversial Israeli military policy that orders the use of maximum force to prevent the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers, even if it means risking their lives. The policy allows soldiers to open fire without constraints, targeting not only the abductors but also potential escape routes, including junctions, roads and highways, a former Israeli army soldier told Al Jazeera.

The directive was last invoked in 2014 during the Gaza war, resulting in the deaths of dozens of Palestinians and accusations of war crimes. Although the Israeli army denied using the doctrine, it was reportedly revoked in 2016 and used again now.

According to the Haaretz report, the protocol was used by the IDF after the October 7 attack at three army facilities, potentially endangering civilians. A message sent to Israel’s Gaza division at 11:22 am ordered that “not a single vehicle can return to Gaza,” implying that vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers.  

“Everyone knew by then that such vehicles could be carrying kidnapped civilians or soldiers … Everyone knew what it meant to not let any vehicles return to Gaza,” a source told the Israeli newspaper. 

While the extent of harm to civilians and soldiers is unknown, soldiers’ testimonies and IDF officers suggest it was used widely. The report stated that the Hannibal directive “did not prevent the kidnapping of seven of them [soldiers] or the killing of 15 other spotters, as well as 38 other soldiers”.

On October 7, Hamas captured dozens of Israelis, including both soldiers and civilians. Many of these captives remain in the group’s custody, while others were killed in subsequent Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. According to Israeli authorities, 1,139 people have died in the attacks, with 250 taken captive.

Israel’s onslaught in Gaza has killed 38,000 people and displaced 1.9 million — about 90% of the city’s population — since the beginning of the war.

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.)

Modiin, Israel:

On a Tel Aviv overpass, former spy Gonen Ben Itzhak addresses a small gathering of flag-waving protesters worried about the future of Israel under longest-serving premier Benjamin Netanyahu. Motorists honk enthusiastically to the group from the road as they drive past, and a man on a scooter passing underneath shouts “Traitor!”

A former Shin Bet intelligence agent, Ben Itzhak once handled the son of a Hamas co-founder as an informant, to prevent attacks in the occupied West Bank.

Now he protests on the streets against Netanyahu and his right-wing coalition government.

“Netanyahu is really the biggest danger to the state of Israel, and believe me I arrested some of the biggest terrorists during the Second Intifada,” the 53-year-old told AFP at his home in Modiin, referring to the 2000-2005 Palestinian uprising.

“I know what is a terrorist. I think Netanyahu is dragging Israel into destruction.”

He cites Netanyahu’s recent tensions with US President Joe Biden — he accused him of delaying American arms deliveries for Israel’s Gaza war — as an example of why many believe the Israeli leader must go.

“Biden is the biggest supporter of Israel… and Netanyahu spit on his face,” said Ben Itzhak.

“He’s destroying the very important relationship with the United States.”

 ‘The Green Prince’ 

Ben Itzhak — who joined the security services in the 1990s after premier Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination — has become a leading figure in protests against Netanyahu.

He is part of the “Crime Minister” movement, and once stepped in front of the premier’s motorcade during a 2018 anti-corruption protest.

He ended up being tackled by the very security service he once worked for.

Prosecutors are still pressing ahead with a corruption trial against Netanyahu despite the war, and some protesters have tried to break through police lines to get to his home.

Years before his own protest, Ben Itzhak was the handler for Mosab Hassan Yousef, known as “The Green Prince” and the eldest offspring of Hamas co-founder Sheikh Hassan Yousef.

He worked with the Hamas collaborator to follow Palestinian militants to thwart suicide operations, including arresting jailed Fatah figurehead Marwan Barghouti.

Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel could have been prevented by a double agent like Yousef reporting the plan, and the country’s security elite underestimated Hamas, the former spy believes.

“You need an old asset to call you and to tell you something is going wrong. And it seems like we didn’t have it,” he said.

“We think that our enemy is stupid. In the end, Hamas was smarter. It’s very hard to say.”

Ben Itzhak believes it is time to “change the equation” in Gaza — end the war and rally international support to put Mahmud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority in charge.

 ‘Everything is explosive’ 

“The military rules the West Bank, rules Gaza. Enough. We need to find the solution,” he said.

Ben Itzhak accuses Netanyahu of propping up Hamas while seeking to nix any peace process so he can stay in power.

“Netanyahu thinks only about himself, about his criminal problems, how to survive politically in Israel,” he said.

Netanyahu has repeatedly denied allegations of corruption, and on Monday reiterated that Israeli forces will eliminate Hamas.

“We will not end the war (in Gaza) until we eliminate Hamas, and until we return residents of the south and north to their homes securely,” he told parliament.

The former agent also claims the Israeli leader has let ultranationalist security minister Itamar Ben Gvir use the police as his own “militia” to disrupt weekly anti-government protests in Tel Aviv.

He questions Netanyahu’s allegiance with the far-right Jewish Power party frontman who was once barred from the Israeli military and investigated by the country’s security services for extremism.

“God… didn’t help us on October 7, the way he didn’t help us in Auschwitz,” he said.

Ben Itzhak said he himself has jumped in front of a water cannon to protect protesters from increasing police brutality, which landed him with a conviction that was overturned in March.

“Today Israel from the inside is destroyed. He (Netanyahu) is destroying everything,” he said.

The more Netanyahu bends to the ultranationalist allies, the weaker Israel’s security, says Ben Itzhak, claiming that they are also taking control of the army and prison service.

“Everything is explosive now,” he said.

“I will tell Netanyahu… resign. This will be the biggest help you can do to the people of the State of Israel.”

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

Cairo:

Israeli forces pounded Rafah in southern Gaza on Friday, as well as other areas across the enclave, killing at least 45 Palestinians as troops engaged in close-quarter combat with Hamas group operatives, residents and Israel’s military said.

Residents said the Israelis appeared to be trying to complete their capture of Rafah, which borders Egypt and has been the focus of an Israeli assault since early May.

Tanks were forcing their way into the western and northern parts of the city, having already captured the east, south, and centre.

Firing from planes, tanks, and ships off the coast caused more people to flee the city, which a few months ago was sheltering more than a million displaced people, most of whom have now relocated again.

The Gaza health ministry said at least 25 Palestinians had been killed in Mawasi in western Rafah and 50 wounded. Palestinians said a tank shell hit a tent housing displaced families.

“Two tanks climbed a hilltop overseeing Mawasi and they sent balls of fire that hit the tents of the poor people displaced in the area,” one resident told Reuters over a chat app.

The Israeli military said that the incident was under review. “An initial inquiry conducted suggests that there is no indication that a strike was carried out by the IDF (Israel Defence Forces) in the Humanitarian Area in Al-Mawasi,” it said.

Earlier, the military said its forces were conducting “precise, intelligence-based” actions in the Rafah area, where troops were involved in close-quarter combat and had located tunnels used by Hamas.

Over the past week, the military said, troops targeted a university that served as a Hamas headquarters from which Hamas operatives fired on soldiers and found weapons and barrel bombs. It did not name the university.

In the central Gaza area of Nusseirat, the military said soldiers killed dozens of operatives over the past week and found a weapons depot containing mortar bombs and military equipment belonging to Hamas.

Some residents said the Israeli onslaught on Rafah had intensified in the previous two days and that the sounds of explosions and gunfire had hardly stopped.

“Last night was one of the worst nights in western Rafah: Drones, planes, tanks, and naval boats bombarded the area. We feel the occupation is trying to complete the control of the city,” said Hatem, 45, reached by text message.

“They are taking heavy strikes from the resistance fighters, which may be slowing them down.”

STRIKES ON KHAN YOUNIS AND GAZA CITY

More than eight months into the war in Gaza, Israel’s advance is now focused on the two last areas its forces had yet to seize: Rafah on Gaza’s southern edge and the area surrounding Deir al-Balah in the centre.

“The entire city of Rafah is an area of Israeli military operations,” Ahmed Al-Sofi, the mayor of Rafah, said in a statement carried by Hamas media on Friday.

“The city is living through a humanitarian catastrophe and people are dying inside their tents because of Israeli bombardment.”

Sofi said no medical facility was functioning in the city, and that remaining residents and displaced families lacked the minimum daily needs of food and water.

Palestinian and U.N. figures show that fewer than 100,000 people may have remained in the far western side of the city, which had been sheltering more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people before the Israeli assault began in early May.

In nearby Khan Younis, an Israeli air strike on Friday killed three people, including a father and son, medics said.

In parallel, Israeli forces continued a new pushback into some Gaza City suburbs in the north of the enclave, where they fought with Hamas-led operatives.

On Friday, an Israeli air strike on a Gaza City municipal facility killed five people, including four municipal workers, the territory’s Civil Emergency Service said. Rescue teams were searching the rubble for more missing victims.

In the nearby Beach camp, an Israeli air strike on a house killed at least seven people, medics said.

Palestinian health officials said at least 45 Palestinians were killed in Israeli strikes across Gaza on Friday.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its Gaza office was damaged when heavy-calibre projectiles landed nearby, in an area where hundreds of displaced Palestinians are living in tents.

“This grave security incident is one of several in recent days; previously stray bullets have reached ICRC structures,” the organization said in a post on X on Friday. “We decry these incidents that put the lives of humanitarians and civilians at risk.”

Israel’s ground and air campaign was triggered when Hamas-led operatives barged into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing around 1,200 people and seizing more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The offensive has left Gaza in ruins, killed more than 37,400 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and left nearly the entire population homeless and destitute.

The United Nations said on Friday it is Israel’s responsibility – as the occupying power in the Gaza Strip – to restore public order and safety in the Palestinian territory so humanitarian aid can be delivered, amid warnings of imminent famine.

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

Mourners gather next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in an Israeli strike that hit a tent camp, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Al-Mawasi area in western Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on June 21, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israeli forces shelled tent camps for displaced Palestinians north of Rafah on Friday, killing at least 25 people and wounding another 50 according to Gaza’s Heath Ministry and emergency workers, in the latest deadly attack in the tiny Palestinian territory where hundreds of thousands have fled fighting between Israel and Hamas.

According to Ahmed Radwan, a spokesperson for the Civil Defense first responders in Rafah, witnesses told rescue workers about the shelling at two locations in a coastal area that has become filled with tents. The Health Ministry reported the number of people killed and wounded in the attacks.

Also read | Israel may have violated laws of war in Gaza campaign, UN rights office says

The locations of the attacks provided by Civil Defense were just outside an Israeli-designated safe zone. The Israeli military said they were looking into the strikes at the reported coordinates. Israel has previously bombed locations in the vicinity of the “humanitarian zone” in Muwasi, a rural area on the Mediterranean coast that has filled with sprawling tent camps in recent months.

The strikes came as Israel pushed ahead with its military operation in Rafah, where over a million Palestinians had sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in Gaza. Most have now fled Rafah, but the United Nations says no place in Gaza is safe and humanitarian conditions are dire as families shelter in tents and cramped apartments without adequate food, water, or medical supplies.

Friday’s strikes took place less than a month after an Israeli bombing triggered a deadly fire that tore through a camp for displaced Palestinians in southern Gaza, drawing widespread international outrage — including from some of Israel’s closest allies — over the military’s expanding offensive into Rafah.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that it tries to minimize civilian deaths. It blames the large number of civilian casualties on militants and says it’s because they operate among the population.

With Israel’s war against Hamas now in its ninth month, international criticism is growing over Israel’s campaign of systematic destruction in Gaza, at a huge cost in civilian lives. The top United Nations court has concluded there is a “plausible risk of genocide ” in Gaza — a charge Israel strongly denies.

Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 37,100 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.

Israel launched the war after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Washington:

The controversial US effort to boost Gaza aid deliveries by building a temporary pier has faced repeated problems, with bad weather damaging the structure and causing other interruptions to the arrival of desperately needed assistance.

More than 4,100 metric tons (nine million pounds) of aid has been delivered via the $230 million pier project so far, but it has only been operational for limited periods, falling short of President Joe Biden’s pledge that it would enable a “massive increase” in assistance reaching Gaza “every day.”

The coastal territory has been devastated by more than eight months of Israeli operations against Palestinian militant group Hamas, uprooting Gaza’s population and leaving them in dire need of aid.

“The Gaza pier regretfully amounted to an extremely expensive distraction from what is truly needed, and what is also legally required,” said Michelle Strucke, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies Humanitarian Agenda.

That is “safe and unimpeded humanitarian access for humanitarian organizations to provide aid for a population in Gaza that is suffering historic levels of deprivation,” she said.

US forces have also dropped aid by air, but that plus deliveries via the pier “were never meant to substitute for scaled, sustainable access to land crossings that provided safe access by humanitarian workers to provide aid,” Strucke said.

“Pursuing them took away decision makers’ time, energy, and more than $200 million US taxpayer dollars.”

 Damaged pier, beached vessels 

Biden announced during his State of the Union address in March that the US military would establish the pier and American troops began constructing it the following month, initially working offshore.

But in a sign of issues to come, high seas and winds required construction to be relocated to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

The pier was completed in early May, but weather conditions meant it was unsafe to immediately move it into place, and it was not attached to the Gaza coast until the middle of the month.

High seas caused four US Army vessels supporting the mission to break free of their moorings on May 25, beaching two of them, and the pier was damaged by bad weather three days later, requiring sections to be repaired and rebuilt at Ashdod.

It was reattached to the coast on June 7, but aid deliveries were soon paused for two days due to bad weather conditions.

The pier then had to be removed from the shore and moved to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from high seas. It was returned to Gaza this week and aid deliveries have now resumed.

Raphael Cohen, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation research group, said the “pier effort has yet to produce the results that the Biden administration hoped.”

“Aside from the weather issues, it’s been quite expensive and has not fixed the operational challenges of getting aid into Gaza,” he said.

Suspended aid distribution 

Cohen said that despite the issues with the pier, it does provide another entry point for aid and allows assistance to be brought in even when land crossings are closed — a persistent problem that has worsened the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza.

And he said the effort may also help improve future deployments of the military’s temporary pier capability, which was last used operationally more than a decade ago in Haiti.

In addition to weather, the project is facing a major challenge in terms of the distribution of aid that arrives via the pier, which the UN World Food Programme decided to halt while it assesses the security situation — an evaluation that is still ongoing.

That announcement came after Israel conducted a nearby operation earlier this month that freed four hostages but which health officials in Hamas-ruled Gaza said killed more than 270 people.

The UN has said it welcomes all efforts to bring in aid, but that land routes are the most important routes for the arrival of assistance.

Strucke emphasized that “what Gazans need is not the appearance of aid — they need actual aid to reach them.”

Washington “should be very careful not to support actions that may look good on paper to increase routes to provide assistance, but do not result in aid actually reaching Palestinians in need at scale,” she said.

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

Gaza City:

 The Israeli army has confirmed the killing of a Hamas commander in an airstrike in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip.

Israeli military spokesperson Avichay Adraee said on Thursday in a press statement that Ahmed Al-Sawarka, who led sniper operations in the Beit Hanoun area and played a role in “terrorist” acts against Israeli forces, was killed by a military aircraft.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said on Thursday that IDF troops are continuing to operate in the central Gaza Strip and the southern Rafah area, Xinhua news agency reported.

The health authorities in Gaza said in a press statement that as of Thursday, the Palestinian death count from Israeli military operations has risen to 37,431 people, with 85,653 others wounded.

Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip to retaliate against a Hamas rampage through the southern Israeli border on October 7, 2023, during which about 1,200 people were killed and around 250 were taken hostage.

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

Rafah:

Gaza officials said Israeli strikes on a centre for displaced people killed dozens in a “massacre” near the southern city of Rafah on Sunday, while the Israeli army said it had targeted Hamas operatives.

The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said in a statement that the strikes “claimed the lives of 35 martyrs and left dozens injured, most of them children and women”.

The Hamas-run government media office in Gaza earlier said the strike hit a centre run by the UN agency for Palestinian refugees near Rafah, branding it a “horrific massacre”.

Israel’s army said its aircraft “struck a Hamas compound in Rafah”, killing Yassin Rabia and Khaled Nagar, both senior officials for the Palestinian Hamas group in the occupied West Bank.

It added that it was “aware of reports indicating that as a result of the strike and fire that was ignited, several civilians in the area were harmed. The incident is under review.”

Israel’s army said Sunday at least eight rockets were fired towards central areas of the country from Rafah, with strikes targeting the commercial hub of Tel Aviv for the first time in months.

Fighting has recently centred on Rafah, where Israel’s military launched a ground operation in early May despite widespread opposition over concerns for civilians sheltering there.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said its ambulance crews transported “a large number” of people killed and injured in the Rafah strikes.

The Palestinian presidency in the West Bank called it a “heinous massacre”, accusing Israeli forces of “deliberately targeting” the tents of displaced people.

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli strikes killed and wounded at least 50 people in the area, where it said 100,000 displaced people live.

Hamas said Palestinians must “rise up and march” against the Israeli army’s “massacre” in Rafah.

‘Strong Palestinian Authority’

Netanyahu vowed to pursue the offensive ahead of a war cabinet meeting amid intense diplomacy to forge a truce and a hostage-release deal.

He has long rejected Hamas’s demand for a permanent end to the conflict triggered by the Palestinian Hamas group’s October 7 attack.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP the war cabinet would “discuss a hostage release deal” on Sunday.

Before the meeting, Netanyahu’s office said Hamas’s chief in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, “continues to demand the end of the war, the withdrawal of the IDF (army) from the Gaza Strip and leaving Hamas in place, so that it will be able to carry out the atrocities of October 7 again and again”.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu strongly opposes this,” a statement said.

EU members Ireland and Spain, and also Norway, have said they will recognise the State of Palestine from Tuesday, drawing furious Israeli condemnation.

“In order to make peace, we need a strong Palestinian Authority, not a weaker one,” said the EU’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, who met in Brussels with Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Mustafa.

Mustafa, whose government is based in the occupied West Bank, said the “first priority” was to support the people in Gaza, especially through a ceasefire, and then “rebuilding the institutions of the Palestinian Authority” in the territory after Hamas seized it from the PA in 2007.

US President Joe Biden has pushed for renewed international efforts to halt the war, now in its eighth month.

The Israeli official had said Saturday that “there is an intention to renew these talks this week” after negotiations involving US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators stalled in early May.

Pressure on Israel

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Hamas operatives also took 252 hostages, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

As the war grinds on, the families of hostages still held by operatives have piled pressure on Netanyahu to secure a deal to free them.

Washington has also taken a tougher line with its close ally as outrage over the war and US support for Israel has become a major issue for Biden, seeking re-election in a battle against Donald Trump.

Strikes on Tel Aviv

Hamas’s armed wing said Sunday that it targeted Tel Aviv “with a large rocket barrage in response to the Zionist massacres against civilians”.

“Hamas launched these rockets from near two mosques in Rafah,” Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said.

“Hamas is holding our hostages in Rafah, which is why we have been conducting a precise operation” there.

The United Nations has warned of looming famine in besieged Gaza, where most hospitals are no longer functioning.

Last Monday, the prosecutor at the International Criminal Court said he was seeking arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his defence minister as well as for three top Hamas figures.

And on Friday, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive or any other operation there that could bring about “the physical destruction” of the Palestinians.

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