Ceasefire negotiations in Cairo ended on Thursday (File)
The Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday that efforts to reach a ceasefire for the Gaza Strip were back to square one after Israel effectively rejected a proposal from international mediators.
Hamas said in a statement that it will hold consultations with Palestinian factions to review its negotiating strategy to end the seven-month war triggered by its deadly attack on Israel on October 7.
The United Nations warned hours earlier that aid to Gaza could be halted days after Israel took control this week of the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, a vital supply route to the devastated Palestinian enclave.
Despite strong US pressure, Israel said it will press ahead with an attack on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where more than 1 million displaced people have sought refuge and Israeli forces say Hamas militants are hiding.
Israeli tanks captured the main road dividing the eastern and western sections of Rafah on Friday, effectively surrounding the eastern part of the city, in an attack that prompted Washington to block some military aid to its ally.
Indirect diplomacy has failed to put an end to a war that, according to health authorities in Gaza, controlled by Hamas, has killed almost 35,000 people since the October 7 attack. About 1,200 people were killed in Israel and 253 taken hostage on October 7, according to Israeli records.
Ceasefire talks in Cairo ended on Thursday with no agreement to stop the fighting and release the hostages.
Hamas said it agreed earlier this week to a proposal presented by Qatari and Egyptian mediators that had already been accepted by Israel. Israel said Hamas’ proposal contained elements it could not accept.
“Israel’s rejection of the mediators’ proposal through the changes it made has returned things to square one,” Hamas said in Friday’s statement.
“In light of Netanyahu’s behavior and the rejection of the mediators’ document and the attack on Rafah and the occupation of the crossing, the leadership of the movement will hold consultations with the brotherly leaders of the Palestinian factions to review our negotiating strategy.”
Explosions and gunshots
Residents described near-constant explosions and gunfire east and northeast of Rafah on Friday, with heavy fighting between Israeli forces and Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants.
Hamas said it had ambushed Israeli tanks near a mosque in the east of the city, a sign that the Israelis had penetrated several kilometers east to the outskirts of the urban area.
Israel ordered civilians out of the eastern part of Rafah, forcing tens of thousands of people to seek shelter outside the city, previously the last refuge for more than a million people who fled other parts of the enclave during the war.
Israel says it cannot win the war without attacking Rafah to root out thousands of Hamas fighters it believes are sheltering there. Hamas says it will fight to defend it.
Supplies were already running low and aid operations could be halted within days as fuel and food stocks run out, United Nations aid agencies said.
“For five days, no fuel and virtually no humanitarian aid has entered the Gaza Strip, and we are scraping the bottom,” said UNICEF Senior Emergency Coordinator in the Gaza Strip, Hamish Young.
Aid agencies say the battle has endangered hundreds of thousands of already displaced civilians.
“It’s not safe, the whole of Rafah is not safe as tank bombs have fallen everywhere since yesterday,” Abu Hassan, 50, a resident of Tel al-Sultan, west of Rafah, told Reuters via an app chat.
“I’m trying to get out, but I can’t pay 2,000 shekels ($540) to buy a tent for my family,” he said. “There is a growing movement of people out of Rafah, even from the western areas, although they have not been designated as red zones by the occupation.”
Israeli tanks have already isolated eastern Rafah from the south, capturing and closing the only passage between the enclave and Egypt. An advance on Friday to the Salahuddin road through the Gaza Strip completed the siege of the “red zone”, where residents were ordered to leave.
The Israeli military said its forces in eastern Rafah located several tunnel shafts and that troops backed by an air strike fought closely with groups of Hamas fighters, killing several. He said Israeli jets had hit several locations from where rockets and mortars had been fired at Israel in recent days.
The prospect of an all-out attack on Rafah has opened up one of the biggest rifts in generations between Israel and its closest ally, the United States, which has blocked arms shipments to Israel for the first time since the start of the war.
Netanyahu said on Thursday that Israel would “fight with its nails” if necessary and hoped differences with President Joe Biden would be resolved.
(Except the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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