Gaza deal must let Israel resume fighting: Netanyahu

Nidal al-Mughrabi and Maayan Lubell | July 8, 2024

Any Gaza ceasefire deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until its objectives are met, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says as talks over a US plan aimed at ending the nine-month-old war are expected to restart.

Five days after Hamas accepted a key part of the plan, two officials from the Palestinian militant group said it was awaiting Israel’s response to its latest proposal.

Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations on Sunday on the next steps in negotiating the three-phase plan that was presented in May by US President Joe Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt.

It aims to end the war and free around 120 Israeli hostages held in Gaza.

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.

But Netanyahu said he insisted the deal must not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until its war objectives are met. Those goals were defined at the start of the war as dismantling Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, as well as returning the hostages.

“The plan that has been agreed to by Israel and which has been welcomed by President Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war,” Netanyahu said.

The deal, he said, must also prohibit weapons smuggling to Hamas via the Gaza-Egypt border and should not allow for thousands of armed militants to return to northern Gaza.

US 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.

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.

“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.

In Israel, protesters took to the streets across the country to press 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 tyres 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.

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.

The conflict was triggered on October 7 when fighters led by Hamas, which controlled Gaza, attacked southern Israel, killing 1200 people and taking around 250 hostages, according to Israeli figures.

More than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military onslaught, according to Gaza health officials, and the coastal enclave has largely been reduced to rubble.