Hamas urges US pressure on Israel over Gaza truce

Hamas called on the United States Thursday to “exert real pressure” on Israel to reach a Gaza ceasefire agreement as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there was no deal in the making.

The two sides have traded blame over stalling talks for a ceasefire and hostage exchange as Netanyahu faces pressure to seal a deal following the deaths of six Gaza captives.

Hamas’s Qatar-based lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya called on the US to “exert real pressure on Netanyahu and his government” and “abandon their blind bias” towards Israel.

But Netanyahu said there is “not a deal in the making”.

“Unfortunately, it’s not close but we will do everything we can to get them to the point where they do make a deal,” he told US media.

Netanyahu insists that Israel must retain control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas, whose October 7 attack on Israel started the war.

Hamas is demanding complete Israeli withdrawal from the area and on Thursday said Netanyahu’s position “aims to thwart reaching an agreement”.

The Palestinian militant group says a new deal is unnecessary because they agreed months ago to a truce outlined by Biden.

“We warn against falling into the trap of Netanyahu… who uses negotiations to prolong the aggression against our people,” Hamas said in a statement.

Washington has been pushing a proposal it says could bridge gaps between the warring sides, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying “90 percent is agreed”.

“It’s really incumbent on both parties to get to yes on these remaining issues,” Blinken said during a visit to Haiti.

– ‘Make them’ sign deal –

At Israeli protests in several cities this week, Netanyahu’s critics have blamed him for hostages’ deaths, saying he has refused to make necessary concessions for striking a ceasefire deal.

“We’ll do everything so that all hostages will be with us. And if the leaders don’t want to sign a deal, we’ll make them,” said Gil Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the six hostages whose bodies were found in a Gaza tunnel last week.

Dickmann took part in a rally at Tel Aviv on Thursday evening, where crowds of demonstrators carried symbolic coffins in a procession, an AFP journalist reported.

Key mediator Qatar has said that Israel’s approach was “based on an attempt to falsify facts and mislead world public opinion by repeating lies”.

Such moves “will ultimately lead to the demise of peace efforts”, Qatar’s foreign ministry warned.

The October 7 attack by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.

Of 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military says are dead. Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,878 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Most of the dead are women and children, according to the UN rights office.

Israel kept up its bombardment overnight into Friday, with an AFP correspondent reporting a huge explosion in the east of Gaza City.

Six people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house southeast of the city, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Friday.

– West Bank deadly assault –

While Israel presses its Gaza offensive, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said the military should use its “full strength” against Palestinian militants in the occupied West Bank.

“These terrorist organisations that have various names, whether in Nur al-Shams, Tulkarem, Faraa or Jenin, must be wiped out,” he said, referring to cities and refugee camps where an Israeli military operation is underway.

The Israeli military said Thursday its aircraft “conducted three targeted strikes on armed terrorists” in the Tubas area, which includes Faraa refugee camp.

A strike on a car killed five men aged 21 to 30 and wounded two others, the territory’s health ministry.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said the Israeli military handed over the dead body of a 17-year-old, after medics were prevented from reaching him when he was wounded.

Israel has killed at least 36 Palestinians across the northern West Bank since its assault there started on August 28, according to figures released by the health ministry, including children and militants.

One Israeli soldier was killed in Jenin, where the majority of the Palestinian fatalities have been.

– Polio vaccination drive –

Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has left the territory in ruins, with the destruction of water and sanitation infrastructure blamed for the spread of disease.

The humanitarian crisis has led to Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years, prompting a massive vaccination effort launched Sunday with localised “humanitarian pauses” in fighting.

Nearly 200,000 children in central Gaza have received a first dose, the World Health Organization said, and a second stage got underway Thursday in the south, before medics move north.

Louise Wateridge, spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), warned however that the vaccination drive in the south may not reach all children, as some do not reside in the designated zones where Israel has agreed not to strike.

The campaign aims to fully vaccinate more than 640,000 children, with second doses due in about four weeks.