Jerusalem, Undefined – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday offered to let Hamas leaders leave Gaza but demanded the group abandon its arms, as his country kept up its bombardment of the Palestinian territory.
The strike in Khan Yunis came in the morning on the first day of Eid al-Fitr, the festival marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Israel resumed intense bombing of the Palestinian territory on March 18 and then launched a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire in the war with Hamas.
Netanyahu rejected criticism that his government was not engaging in negotiations aimed at releasing hostages held in Gaza, insisting the renewed military pressure on Hamas was proving effective.
“We are negotiating under fire… We can see cracks beginning to appear” in Hamas’s positions, the Israeli leader told a cabinet meeting.
In the “final stage”, Netanyahu said that “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave”.
“The military pressure is working,” he said.
“The combination of military pressure and diplomatic pressure is the only thing that has brought the hostages back.”
Hamas has expressed a willingness to relinquish Gaza’s administration, but has warned its weapons are a “red line”.
Egypt, Qatar and the United States are attempting to again broker a ceasefire and secure the release of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
A senior Hamas official stated on Saturday that the group had approved a new ceasefire proposal put forward by mediators and urged Israel to support it.
Netanyahu’s office confirmed receipt of the proposal and stated that Israel had submitted a counterproposal in response.
However, the details of the latest mediation efforts remain undisclosed.
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Gaza medics and witnesses reported that Israeli air strikes continued in Khan Yunis and some other parts of Gaza throughout the day.
An air strike in the southern city of Rafah wounded two children, according to medics.
Meanwhile, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it recovered the bodies of 14 rescuers killed a week ago in Israeli military fire on the Tal al-Sultan neighbourhood of Gaza’s southern city of Rafa.
Netanyahu said Israel was working towards a plan proposed by US President Donald Trump to displace Gazans to other countries.
The premier said that after the war, Israel would ensure overall security in Gaza and “enable the implementation of the Trump plan” — which had initially called for the mass displacement of all 2.4 million people living in the Palestinian territory — calling it a “voluntary migration plan”.
Trump proposed that Gazans be removed from the territory that would then be owned by the United States and redeveloped, with no right of return for the Palestinians.
He later said he was “not forcing” the widely condemned plan but would “sit back and recommend it”.
Since the fighting restarted, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that at least 921 people have been killed, in figures issued on Saturday.
The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory military campaign against has killed at least 50,277 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to the territory’s health ministry.
The resumption of the war has also prompted the Iran-backed Huthi rebels in Yemen to resume launching missiles and drones at Israel.
On Sunday, the Israeli military said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen “prior to crossing into Israeli territory”.
The Huthis say they are acting in solidarity with the Palestinians, and have also attacked shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden on the same basis.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s office said he would visit Hungary on April 2 for a multi-day trip in defiance of an arrest warrant against him from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban publicly extended an invitation to Netanyahu in November shortly after the ICC issued the warrant.
Israel approves new bypass road in occupied West Bank
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Sunday announced the approval of a road project in the occupied West Bank that would separate traffic for Palestinians and Israelis near the Maale Adumim settlement.
The project “will thus improve traffic flow and strengthen transportation infrastructure between Jerusalem, Maale Adumim and the eastern Binyamin region, allowing for the continued development of settlements in the E1 area,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.
The international community has warned repeatedly that Jewish settlement construction in the E1 corridor, which passes from Jerusalem to Jericho, would slice the West Bank in two and compromise the contiguity of a future Palestinian state.
Anti-settlement NGO Peace Now slammed the project as a “new apartheid road”, with one of the planned roads rerouting Palestinian traffic away from the main artery used by Israelis, to reach a number of villages.
“We continue to strengthen the security of Israeli citizens and expand our settlements,” Netanyahu said, according to the statement.
Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas condemned the project.
In a statement, it said “the continued expansion of settlement projects in occupied Jerusalem exposes the malicious intentions of the occupation.”
Israel seized the West Bank and east Jerusalem in the Six-Day War of 1967 in moves never recognised by the international community.
Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories are considered illegal by the United Nations and most foreign governments.
Several far-right Israeli ministers are openly advocating for Israel to annex all or part of the West Bank, capitalising on US President Donald Trump’s second term.
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Macron urges Israel to ‘put an end to strikes on Gaza’
French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday urged Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “put an end to the strikes on Gaza and return to the ceasefire” in a phone call between the two leaders.
“I called on the Israeli prime minister to put an end to the strikes on Gaza and return to the ceasefire, which Hamas must accept. I underlined that humanitarian aid must be delivered again immediately,” the French leader wrote on the X social network.
Israel resumed intense bombing of the Palestinian territory on March 18 and then launched a new ground offensive, ending a nearly two-month ceasefire in the war with Hamas which the Palestinian militant group sparked with its October 7, 2023 attack.
On Sunday, Gaza’s civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike in Khan Yunis killed at least eight people, including five children, as the displaced Palestinians sheltering there were observing Eid al-Fitr, marking the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan.
Macron likewise “called on Israel to strictly respect the ceasefire” in Lebanon, a former French protectorate where Israel on Friday bombed the southern Beirut stronghold of Hamas’s ally Hezbollah for the first time after four months of truce.
The Beirut strike came after rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel on Friday, testing the fragile truce.
Hezbollah, which like Hamas is backed by Israel’s arch-rival Iran, has denied involvement.
Netanyahu has insisted Israel will target anywhere in Lebanon it deems a threat, warning in a statement on Friday that “the equation has changed”.
Macron had previously denounced the Beirut strikes, which Lebanon’s health ministry reported had killed five people, as an “unacceptable” violation.
