Israeli ministers were due to meet on Thursday evening to discuss a new proposal for a ceasefire in Gaza and Hamas’ response to the release of hostages, as mediators sought to revive stalled talks for a ceasefire after nearly nine months of war.
On Wednesday, the Israeli government said in a statement that it was examining Hamas’s response to the latest proposal and would send its response to the mediators. The discussions are based on a three-phase framework deal announced by President Biden in late May and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council.
An Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Wednesday night that there was a wide gap between the two sides but that Hamas’ response was likely to lead to progress in the talks. The official declined to give further details.
For months, Israel and Hamas, along with Qatar, Egypt and the United States, have been holding indirect talks on a possible ceasefire, which called for a three-phase cease-fire in Gaza and the release of the remaining 120 living and dead hostages. There remained, however, wide gaps on key issues, and negotiations had largely stalled since June.
The main obstacles relate to a fundamental dispute: Hamas wants guarantees that the deal will end the war and the full withdrawal of Israeli forces, while Israel has vowed to continue fighting until Hamas is destroyed and it also wants post-war security. Control in Gaza.
In Israel, some influential members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government have expressed opposition to a potential deal with Hamas.
“Now is not the time to stop, it’s the complete opposite: it’s time to bring in more forces and increase our military pressure,” the country’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Tuesday. “It would be absurd if we stopped a moment before success – the end, the complete victory over Hamas.”
The Biden administration hopes that a cease-fire in Gaza will quell the escalation of cross-border fire on Israel’s northern border. Oct. After the Hamas-led attack on 7, the politically powerful Lebanese armed group Hezbollah repeatedly attacked northern Israel in solidarity with Hamas, which encouraged Israeli attacks in Lebanon.
On Thursday, Hezbollah fired a relatively large barrage, launching 200 rockets and mortars and more than 20 drones into northern Israel, according to the Israeli military. The military said the attack set off air raid sirens throughout the area for more than an hour. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Hezbollah said the barrage was in response to the killing by Israel of a senior Hezbollah military commander the previous day in southern Lebanon’s Tire region. But Hezbollah’s weapons were mostly fired at border areas, avoiding a wider attack on Israel’s heartland that would have most likely provoked a more severe response.
More than 150,000 people on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border have fled, with little idea when they might return home. Hezbollah has said its forces will not stop their attacks until Israel ends its military campaign in Gaza. At the same time, Israeli officials have expressed increasingly vehement threats of a possible invasion into Lebanon to push Hezbollah away from the border.