Hamas said Sunday it was willing to negotiate the release of hostages still held in the Gaza Strip in the absence of a permanent ceasefire with Israel, as mediation efforts stepped up to secure an agreement in the 10th month of the war.
For several months, Qatar, the United States and Egypt, the mediating countries between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement, have been clashing with the demands of both camps.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently said he wants to continue the war until Hamas is destroyed and all hostages taken to the Gaza Strip during the Palestinian movement’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil are released, which triggered the war on October 7.
Hamas, for its part, demanded a definitive ceasefire and an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory before any agreement. But on Sunday, a senior member of the movement announced to AFP that this first “point had been overcome.”
The mediators “undertook that as long as negotiations are ongoing,” a “ceasefire would remain in effect,” he said.
Netanyahu’s office said Israeli envoys would return to Doha in the coming days for talks, and discussions with US mediators are also taking place in Egypt, according to Egyptian media outlet Al-Qahera News.
Meanwhile, fighting and bombings continue unabated in the Gaza Strip and the war threatens to take on a regional dimension with new exchanges of fire on Sunday between the Israeli army and the powerful Lebanese Islamist movement Hezbollah, an ally of Hamas, on Israel’s northern border with Lebanon.
PHOTO EYAD BABA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian man after Israeli shelling in Zawaida, central Gaza Strip, on July 7.
New evacuation order
The Hamas attack in southern Israel on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official data. Of the 251 people kidnapped at the time, 116 are still being held in Gaza, 42 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and which it, along with the United States and the European Union, classifies as a terrorist organization.
His army then launched a major offensive that devastated the Palestinian territory and left 38,153 dead, mostly civilians, according to the health ministry of the Hamas-led Gaza government.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Red Crescent reported that six people were killed in their homes in the central city of Zawaida and nine other Palestinians were killed in strikes on buildings in Gaza City, according to the Gaza Civil Defense.
After nine months of war, Israeli troops are still battling in several areas that the army had previously said it controlled, such as Shujaiya, an eastern district of Gaza City.
Also in Gaza, the Israeli army issued new evacuation orders on Sunday, which concern residents and displaced people from three neighborhoods, calling on them to move west near the coast.
Hamas said Sunday night that four people had been killed in an Israeli strike on a Gaza City school sheltering displaced people, a day after 16 people were reported killed in an Israeli airstrike on a UN-run school in the center of the territory.
The Israeli army claimed to have targeted “terrorists”.
According to the United Nations, 80% of the 2.4 million Gazans in the besieged territory, where conditions are considered “dire,” are displaced.
PHOTO EYAD BABA, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A Palestinian boy walks in front of a school used as a shelter for displaced people in Deir el-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on July 7.
“Ball in Israel’s court”
The mediators have so far managed to secure only one truce in late November, which allowed the release of 80 hostages in exchange for that of 240 Palestinians held by Israel.
According to the senior Hamas official on Sunday, his movement informed the mediators that it wanted to see three steps to achieve a ceasefire, including the entry into Gaza of 400 aid trucks per day and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the “Philadelphia corridor and the Rafah crossing,” which lie between southern Gaza and Egypt.
“The ball is in the Israelis’ court,” the source said, adding that the talks could take “two to three weeks,” “if Israel does not block the negotiations.”
On Sunday evening, Benjamin Netanyahu’s office responded by saying that “any agreement will allow Israel to return and fight until all the objectives of the war are achieved.”
Protesters blocked roads in Tel Aviv on Sunday to demand that the Israeli government accept a deal to free the hostages.
PHOTO ELOISA LOPEZ, REUTERS
Protesters in the streets of Tel Aviv
“An absolute majority supports a hostage deal,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on X.
On another front, Lebanon’s Hezbollah said Sunday it had carried out several attacks against Israel, including targeting a strategic reconnaissance center on Mount Hermon in the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan.
This is the “most important operation carried out by its air forces” since October 8 according to the movement, which says it destroyed and started a “major fire” on the site.
The Israeli army said in a statement that it had “intercepted” several “aerial targets”, including “an explosive drone which fell in an open area of the Mount Hermon region”, without causing any injuries.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who visited troops on Mount Hermon, said that “even if there was a ceasefire” in Gaza, Israel would continue “to fight and do whatever is necessary” against Hezbollah.
Israeli strikes also targeted several areas in southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese news agency ANI, claiming that Israel had used incendiary and phosphorus bombs.