Palestinian Territories — A senior Hamas official on Saturday dismissed optimistic talk by US President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
“To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion,” Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP. “We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats.”
He was responding to Biden’s comment on Friday that “We are closer than we have ever been.”
Biden spoke after two days of talks in Qatar where Washington tried to bridge differences between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has proven unfounded.
But the stakes have risen significantly since the killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Lebanon’s Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Their deaths led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.
In an effort to avert a broader conflict, Western and Arab diplomats have been shuttling around the Middle East to push for a Gaza deal which they say could help avert a wider regional conflagration.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is headed back to the region this weekend in a bid to help seal a deal.
In a joint statement, the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany and Italy urged all parties to “engage positively and flexibly” in the negotiations.
“We underline the importance of avoiding any escalatory action in the region which would undermine the prospect for peace,” they added.
“There is too much at stake.”
Deadly strikes in Lebanon, Gaza –
As efforts towards a truce continued, so did the killing on Saturday in Gaza and Lebanon.
The Lebanese health ministry said an Israeli air strike in the southern Nabatieh area killed 10 Syrians, including a woman and her two children.
The strike was among the deadliest in south Lebanon since the onset of near-daily exchanges of fire between Israel and Hezbollah following the start of the Gaza war in October.
Israel’s military said it struck a Hezbollah weapons storage facility.
In Hamas-run Gaza, the civil defense authority said an Israeli air strike killed 15 people from a single Palestinian family. The deaths in Al-Zawaida helped push the Gaza health ministry’s war death toll to 40,074.
“We are in the morgue seeing indescribable scenes of limbs and severed heads and children who are dismembered,” said Omar al-Dreemli, a relative.
The Gaza war has displaced most of the territory’s population, destroyed much of the housing and other infrastructure, and left diseases spreading.
The United Nations on Friday appealed for seven-day pauses in the fighting so it could vaccinate children against polio, after the Palestinian health ministry reported Gaza’s first polio case in 25 years.
Bridging gaps –
Israel claimed the killing of Shukr, in a strike on south Beirut, but has not commented directly on the killing of Haniyeh while he visited Tehran.
On Friday Hezbollah released a polished video appearing to show its fighters trucking large missiles through tunnels at an underground facility.
Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that triggered the war resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Hamas also seized 251 hostages, 111 of whom are still held in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead. More than 100 were freed during a one-week truce in November.
In Israel, Blinken will seek to “conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees”, the State Department said.
Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators are working to finalize details of a framework agreement initially outlined by Biden in May. He said Israel had proposed it.
In a joint statement after two days of talks in Qatar, the mediators said they presented both sides with a proposal that “bridges remaining gaps”.
Talks aiming to secure a deal are to resume in Cairo “before the end of next week”, they said.
Hamas did not attend the Doha talks. An official of the movement, Osama Hamdan, had told AFP the group would join if the meeting set a timetable for implementing what Hamas had already agreed to.
On Friday, officials told AFP that Hamas will not accept “new conditions” from Israel.
A prospective cessation of hostilities has centered around a phased deal beginning with an initial truce.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday had detailed its conditions for a truce, including “a veto on certain prisoners” being released from its jails.
Gazans on the move again –
As truce talks took place, thousands of civilians were on the move again after the Israeli military issued fresh evacuation orders ahead of imminent military action in central-southern Gaza.
“During each round of negotiations, they exert pressure by forcing evacuations and committing massacres,” said Issa Murad, a Palestinian displaced to Deir el-Balah.
Over the past day troops expanded their operations around Gaza’s main southern city of Khan Yunis including by “eliminating” militants who had fired munitions toward Nirim, just outside Gaza, Israel’s military said on Saturday.
Witnesses told AFP that Israeli air strikes hit the Hamad residential towers in the northwest of the city.
Witnesses also spoke of intense gunfire from Israeli tanks in areas north of the city.