Hamas is waiting for a response from Israel on its ceasefire proposal, two officials from the Palestinian group said on Sunday, five days after it accepted a key part of a U.S. plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war in Gaza.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations on Sunday on the next steps in negotiating the three-phase plan that was presented in May by U.S. President Joe Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt. The plan aims to end the war and free around 120 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas.
“We have left our response with the mediators and are waiting to hear the occupation’s response,” one of the two Hamas officials told Reuters, asking not to be identified. Another Palestinian official with knowledge of the ceasefire deliberations said Israel was in talks with the Qataris and that a response was expected within days.
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns is to meet with the Qatari prime minister and the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs on Wednesday in Doha, said a source familiar with the issue who asked not to be further identified. Burns is also expected to visit Cairo this week, along with an Israeli delegation, Egypt’s Al Qahera News TV reported on Sunday, citing a high-ranking source.
Hamas has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign an agreement. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, a Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday on condition of anonymity.
A Palestinian official close to the talks said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel, and would end the war.
Protests in Israel and Escalation in Gaza:
In Israel, protesters took to the streets across the country to pressure the government to agree to the Gaza ceasefire deal, which would bring back hostages still being held in Gaza. They blocked rush-hour traffic at major intersections across the country, picketed politicians’ houses and briefly set fire to tires on the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem highway before police cleared the way.
In Gaza, Palestinian health officials said at least 15 people were killed in Israeli strikes. Among them were Ehab Al-Ghussein, the Hamas-appointed deputy minister of labour whose wife and children were killed in May, and three other people killed in a strike at a church-run school in western Gaza City sheltering families, Hamas media and the Civil Emergency Service said.
The Israeli military said that after it took steps to minimise the risk of civilians being harmed there, it struck militants who were hiding in the school, as well as a facility in the vicinity where weapons were being made.
In central and northern areas of Rafah, on the southern Gaza border with Egypt, Israeli tanks deepened their raids. Health officials there said they had recovered three bodies of Palestinians killed by Israeli fire in the eastern part of the city.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, an allied militant group, said fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several locations Gaza Strip with anti-tank rockets and mortar bombs.
The Israeli military said its forces had killed 30 Palestinian gunmen in Rafah in the past day, and that one of its soldiers was killed in combat.
In Shejaia, an eastern suburb of Gaza City, the military said its forces had killed