CAIRO: Hamas is open to an agreement to end the war in Gaza that would see all hostages released and secure a five-year truce, an official said Saturday as the group’s negotiators held talks with mediators.
A Hamas delegation visited Cairo to discuss with Egyptian mediators ways out of the 18-month war while, on the ground, rescuers said Israeli strikes in Gaza killed at least 35 people.
Nearly eight weeks into an Israeli aid blockade, the United Nations says food and medical supplies are running out in the territory.
The Hamas official, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity, said the Palestinian militant group “is ready for an exchange of prisoners in a single batch and a truce for five years”.
A statement later from Hamas said its delegation had left Cairo on Saturday evening.
The latest bid to seal a ceasefire follows an Israeli proposal Hamas rejected earlier this month as “partial”. The new proposal calls instead for a “comprehensive” agreement to halt the war ignited by the group’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
The rejected Israeli offer, according to a senior Hamas official, included a 45-day ceasefire in exchange for the return of 10 living hostages.
Hamas has consistently demanded that a truce deal must lead to the war’s end, a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and a surge in humanitarian aid.
An Israeli pullout and a “permanent end to the war” would also have occurred — as outlined by then-US president Joe Biden — under a second phase of a ceasefire that had begun on January 19 but which collapsed two months later.
Hamas had sought talks on the second phase but Israel wanted the first phase extended.
Israel demands the return of all hostages seized in the 2023 attack, and Hamas’s disarmament, which the group has rejected as a “red line”.
“This time we will insist on guarantees regarding the end of the war,“ Mahmud Mardawi, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement.
“The occupation can return to war after any partial deal, but it cannot do so with a comprehensive deal and international guarantees.”
Later on Saturday, senior Hamas official Osama Hamdan reiterated that “any proposal that does not include a comprehensive and permanent cessation of the war will not be considered.”
“We will not abandon the resistance’s weapons as long as the occupation persists”, he said in a statement.
– ‘The house collapsed’ –
Israel pounded Gaza again on Saturday.
Mohammed al-Mughayyir, an official with the territory’s civil defence rescue agency, told AFP that the death toll had risen to at least 35.
In Gaza City, in the territory’s north, civil defence said a strike on the Khour family home killed 10 people and left an estimated 20 more trapped in the debris.
Umm Walid al-Khour, who survived the attack, said “everyone was sleeping with their children” when the strike hit and “the house collapsed on top of us.”
Elsewhere across Gaza, 25 more people were killed, rescuers said.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military on the latest strikes but it said that “1,800 terror targets” had been hit across Gaza since the military campaign resumed on March 18.
The military added that “hundreds of terrorists” were also killed.
Qatar, the United States and Egypt brokered the truce which began on January 19 and enabled a surge in aid, alongside exchanges of hostages and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
With Israel and Hamas disagreeing over the ceasefire’s next phase, Israel cut all aid to Gaza before resuming bombardment, followed by a ground offensive.
– Gazans ‘slowly dying’ –
Since then, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, at least 2,111 Palestinians have been killed, taking the overall war death toll in Gaza to 51,495 people, mostly civilians.
The Hamas attack that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, also mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Militants also abducted 251 people, 58 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.
Israel says the military campaign aims to force Hamas to free the remaining captives.
On Friday, the UN’s World Food Programme (WFP) said the hot meal kitchens it was supplying with food in Gaza “are expected to fully run out of food in the coming days”.
On Saturday, AFP footage showed queues of people waiting for food in front of a community kitchen.
“There is no food in the free kitchen, there is no food in the markets… There is no flour or bread,“ said north Gaza resident Wael Odeh.
A senior UN official, Jonathan Whittall, said Gazans were “slowly dying”.
“This is not only about humanitarian needs but also about dignity,“ Whittall, head of the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian affairs in the Palestinian territories, told journalists.
