Signs of renewed activity emerged on Wednesday in the quest for a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas in the nine-month-old war in the Gaza Strip while Israel launched more strikes on the devastated enclave.
After weeks with little public diplomacy, mediators Egypt and Qatar delivered a response from Hamas to a proposal that would include a release of hostages held in Gaza and a ceasefire in the Palestinian enclave.
Israel is studying the document, said a statement released by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office on behalf of the Mossad spy agency.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States have been trying for months to secure a truce and the release of 120 remaining hostages in Gaza, but their efforts have repeatedly failed.
Hamas says any deal must end the war and bring a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Israel says it will accept only temporary pauses in the fighting until Hamas is eradicated.
"Israel is examining the response and will respond to the mediators," the Mossad statement said without further details.
Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules Gaza, said in a statement that its leader Ismail Haniyeh had calls with Qatari and Egyptian mediators around ideas to reach a deal to end the war in Gaza as well as communication with Turkish officials.
The New York Times reported that Israel's top generals want a Gaza ceasefire even if it keeps Hamas in power for the time being, widening a rift between the military and Netanyahu, who has opposed a truce that would let Hamas survive.
The commanders believe a ceasefire would be the best way to secure the release of the remaining Israeli hostages, and they think over-stretched Israeli forces, running low on munitions, need to regroup in case a wider war breaks out with Lebanon's Hezbollah, the report said, citing six current and former Israeli security officials.
An Israeli strike killed top Hezbollah commander Mohammed Nasser in south Lebanon on Wednesday, prompting retaliatory rocket fire by the Iran-backed group into Israel as their dangerously poised conflict rumbled on.
Sparked by the Gaza war, the hostilities with Lebanon have raised concerns about a wider and ruinous conflict between the heavily armed adversaries, prompting U.S. diplomatic efforts aimed at deescalation.
The war in Gaza began when Hamas gunmen burst into southern Israel on Oct. 7, killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages back into Gaza, Israel says. The offensive launched by Israel in retaliation has killed nearly 38,000 people, according to the Gaza health ministry, and has left the heavily built-up coastal enclave in ruins.
At a mall in Karmiel, northern Israel, an Israeli soldier was killed on Wednesday and a second person was wounded in a stabbing, police said. Israel's Ynet news said the assailant, who was also killed, came from Nahaf, a town where members of Israel's Arab minority live.
FAMILIES SLEEP ON THE ROAD, RESIDENTS SAY
On the ground in Gaza, at least 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes in central and northern Gaza, health officials said. Israeli forces also carried out new strikes in the south amid fierce fighting with Palestinian militants overnight, residents said. Israel's military said a 21-year-old captain was killed in combat in northern Gaza.
Fighting persisted overnight in two locations in central Rafah, where tanks have seized several districts and advanced further west and north of the city in recent days.
The Israeli military said its forces pursued targeted operations in Rafah, dismantled several military sites and killed Palestinian militants.
An Israeli airstrike also destroyed a U.N. school in Khan Younis in southern Gaza, where displaced Palestinians sheltered. There was no word on casualties from the Gaza authorities.
Smoke rose from the rubble as frantic people rushed in to search for their children and others fled, distraught and wailing. "What is happening to us is unjust. We cannot bear it, we can't," one woman said.
Many Palestinians were seeking shelter after Israel ordered them to evacuate areas of Khan Younis and Rafah on Tuesday, which the United Nations said was the largest such edict since 1.1 million people were told to leave the north of the enclave in October.
Khan Younis residents said many families slept on the road because they could not find tents.
The Gaza health ministry said an Israeli airstrike on a house in Khan Younis killed Hassan Hamdan, head of the burns and plastic surgery department at Nasser Medical Complex, along with all his family members.
Israel's army did not comment on the ministry's statement and Reuters was unable immediately to verify it.
The last functioning hospital in the area, the Gaza European Hospital, which had housed displaced families as well as patients, was also evacuated. An Israeli defence official said on Tuesday that hospital staff and patients were told they could stay.
The ceasefire plan on the table, which was made public at the end of May by U.S. President Joe Biden, entails the gradual release of Israeli hostages held in Gaza and pullback of Israeli forces over two phases.
It also envisages the freeing of Palestinian prisoners, with the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of the remains of deceased hostages in a third phase.
© (c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2024.
12 Comments
Login to comment
Yrral
Israelis Jews are becoming unglued psychological from Hamas,the fabric of Israel society is becoming an atmosphere of lawlessness and chaos and distrust
Chabbawanga
Why are posts about IDF getting owned being censored?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okZZdXwg0e8
Capuchin
This Al Jazeera article does a great job of exposing the scale of Israel's war on the Palestinian people. Of which the events since Oct 7th are just the latest chapter in an ongoing attempt to exterminate the Palestinian people through any and all means. If it's not genocide I'm not sure what else to call it.
Urbicide - Between October 7 and May 31, Israel damaged or destroyed about 55 percent (or 137,297 structures) in Gaza, according to a report by the UN Satellite Centre (UNOSAT).
Domicide - Of everything destroyed by Israel since October, Gaza’s housing has been hit worst. UNOSAT counted 135,142 damaged housing units, mostly in Gaza City, Khan Younis and northern Gaza.
Politicide - Politicide “was used… to describe Israeli policy towards the Palestinians on the eve of and during the second Intifada in 2000, when Israel’s clear objective was to destroy the conditions for the mere existence of a Palestinian state”, Ziad Majed, a professor of Middle East studies and international relations at the American University of Paris, wrote in Orient XXI in December.
Ecocide - Israel has destroyed more than half of Gaza’s farmland, according to an Al Jazeera investigation. In 2021, 97 percent of Gaza’s water was not suitable for human consumption after more than a decade of Israeli blockade and multiple wars.
Educide - UN experts have warned of scholasticide in Gaza as at least 90 percent of the territory’s schools have been damaged or destroyed. All 12 universities and higher education institutions in Gaza have been destroyed, while thousands of students and teachers have been killed.
Culturcide - Israel has destroyed or damaged about 200 historic cultural sites in Gaza.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/7/3/genocide-urbicide-domicide-how-to-talk-about-israels-war-on-gaza
u_s__reamer
Capuchin's list = war crimes in spades. We have eyes and are not to be taken in by the lies and propaganda of governments and MSM and, most importantly, the truth cannot be killed by silence for which the Japanese language even has a special word: 黙殺 (mokusatsu). A change does seem to be in the air over Gaza: could the IDF be tired of winning already after 9 months of inflicting death and destruction on a daily basis?
zibala
"Israel is examining the response and will respond to the mediators," the Mossad statement said without further details.
It is totally up to Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East, which is fighting terrorists on Israel's lands.
Naturally, Israel, like any country, is permitted under international law to defend itself against terrorists occupying Israeli lands.
RichardPearce
So, the 'signs of revival' are simply the American dependent 'mediators' presenting, yet again, the reasonable deal to the intransigent Israeli regime.
Nobody in the Israeli regime can pull back on the genocide, because the Rubicon has been crossed, even Americans are in the streets and classrooms DEMANDING the Israeli regime be treated as a pariah, BRICS has even the most American dependent ME regimes as worried about the BRICS reactions as the White Bloc's reactions and a thousand $100 drones are a bigger military muscle than dozens of $100 million warplanes.
Aly Rustom
That's a very good question. Hamas is giving them a proper hiding.
WoodyLee
Dear Bibi,
So how is that absolute Victory going?
WoodyLee
""Four IDF military division commanders informed the Israeli Prime Minister that soldiers in Gaza are severely fatigued. Reports say these commanders stated reservists are experiencing 'burnout' due to unequal military service burdens with ultra-Orthodox Jews and inadequate pay.""
Also, Israel just received a new reply from Hamas, but experts in the area believe that Bibi will not deal with it prior to his scheduled July 24th, meeting with Biden.
RichardPearce
Another regime looking for a solution to an inconvenient population after attempts to get them to 'voluntarily' leave its expanding borders experimented with forcing them into a small territory and then bombing it intensely then sending in 'soldiers' to deal with the holdouts.
It moved onto a different technique because the 'soldiers' it sent in became 'exhausted'. But by then, the world (well, mainly Russia, but others that had at one time been comfortable with the regime became uncomfortable and helped) decided to put an end to the regime, which they succeeded in doing
zibala
On the ground in Gaza, at least 12 people were killed in Israeli strikes in central and northern Gaza, health officials said. Israeli forces also carried out new strikes in the south amid fierce fighting with Palestinian militants overnight, residents said.
Israel's precise strikes continue to take out the terrorists one by one while sparing any civilian occupiers of Gaza.
dutch
This is the way.
Hamas must be totally liquidated once and for all.