[🇧🇩] Israel and Hamas war in Gaza-----Can Bangladesh be a peace broker?

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 26 in Gaza

Rescuers in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory killed at least 26 people, the day after Hamas militants said peace talks were to resume.

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Israeli strikes kill 26 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 05 January, 2025, 00:48

A Palestinian boy walks amid the destruction following an Israeli strike that hit the home of the Ghoula family in the Shujaiya neighbourhood of Gaza City, in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday. | AFP photo

Rescuers in Gaza said on Saturday that Israeli strikes across the Palestinian territory killed at least 26 people, the day after Hamas militants said peace talks were to resume.

The civil defence agency said a dawn air strike on the home of the al-Ghoula family in Gaza City killed 11 people, seven of them children.

AFP images from the Gaza City area neighbourhood of Shujaiya showed residents combing through smoking rubble. Bodies including those of small children were lined up on the ground, shrouded in white sheets.

Late on Friday Hamas had said indirect negotiations with Israel were to resume in Qatar that same night for a truce and hostage release deal. There has since been no update.

Civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the Ghoula home in Gaza City ‘was completely destroyed’.

‘It was a two-storey building and several people are still under the rubble,’ he said, adding Israeli drones had ‘also fired on ambulance staff’.

Contacted by AFP, the Israeli army did not immediately comment on the strike.

‘A huge explosion woke us up. Everything was shaking,’ said neighbour Ahmed Mussa. ‘It was home to children, women. There wasn’t anyone wanted or who posed a threat.’

Elsewhere, the civil defence agency said an Israeli strike killed five security officers tasked with accompanying aid convoys as they drove through the southern city of Khan Yunis.

Bassal accused Israel of having ‘deliberately targeted’ them to ‘affect the humanitarian supply chain and increase the suffering’ of the population.

The army has not yet responded to the accusation.

Rescuers said strikes elsewhere in Gaza killed 10 other people, including a child and two other members of the same family, when their house was bombed in Khan Yunis.

AFP images showed Palestine Red Crescent paramedics in Gaza City moving the body of one of their colleagues, his green jacket laid over the blanket that covered his corpse.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said 136 people had been killed over the previous 48 hours.​

 

[Saif]

Hamas agrees to free 34 Gaza hostages under mooted deal

A Hamas official said Sunday the group was ready to free 34 hostages in the ‘first phase’ of a potential deal with Israel, after Israel said indirect talks on a truce and hostage release agreement had resumed in Qatar...

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Hamas agrees to free 34 Gaza hostages under mooted deal
Agence France-Presse . Palestine 06 January, 2025, 06:58

A Hamas official said Sunday the group was ready to free 34 hostages in the ‘first phase’ of a potential deal with Israel, after Israel said indirect talks on a truce and hostage release agreement had resumed in Qatar.

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have tried for months to strike a deal to end the war. The latest effort comes just days before Donald Trump takes office as president of the United States on January 20.

The talks took place as Israel pounded the Gaza Strip on Sunday, killing at least 23 people according to rescuers, nearly 15 months into the war.

During that time there has been only one truce, a one-week pause in November 2023 that saw 80 Israeli hostages freed along with 240 Palestinians from Israeli jails.

Now, ‘Hamas has agreed to release 34 Israeli prisoners from a list presented by Israel as part of the first phase of a prisoner exchange deal,’ said an official of the Palestinian militants.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Hamas had yet to provide a list of hostages for potential release under an agreement.

The Hamas official, requesting anonymity as he was not authorised to discuss the ongoing negotiations with the media, said the initial swap would include all the women, children, elderly people and sick captives still held in Gaza.

But Hamas needed time to determine their condition, he added.

‘Hamas has agreed to release the 34 prisoners, whether alive or dead,’ the official said. ‘However, the group needs a week of calm to communicate with the captors and identify those who are alive and those who are dead.’

On October 7, 2023, when the Gaza war began, Hamas activists seized 251 hostages, of whom 96 remained in Gaza. The Israeli military says 34 of those are dead.

Until the Hamas official’s comment there had been no update on the talks, which both warring sides were to resume in Qatar over the weekend.

‘Efforts are under way to free the hostages, notably the Israeli delegation which left yesterday (Friday) for negotiations in Qatar,’ Israeli defence minister Israel Katz told relatives of a hostage on Saturday, according to his office.

In December, Qatar expressed optimism that ‘momentum’ was returning to the talks following Trump’s election victory.

But Hamas and Israel then traded accusations of imposing new conditions and obstacles.

In northern Gaza on Sunday, the civil defence agency said an air strike on a house in the Sheikh Radwan area had killed at least 11 people.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the victims included women and children, and rescuers were using their ‘bare hands’ to search for five people still trapped under rubble.

The Israeli military said Sunday it had struck more than 100 ‘terror targets’ in Gaza over the past two days, marking an apparent escalation in its assault.

The Hamas-run territory’s health ministry said that 88 people had been killed over the previous 24 hours.

In one strike, five people died when the house of the Abu Jarbou family was struck in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, rescuers said.

AFP footage from another strike, on Bureij camp near Nuseirat, showed rescuers transporting bodies and injured people to a hospital.

It showed a medic attempting to resuscitate a wounded man inside an ambulance, while another carried an injured child to the hospital.

Relatives cried over the bodies of two men wrapped in white shrouds, the images showed.

Several of the strikes targeted sites from which militants had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.

The military also announced that its forces had killed a militant commander in close combat in northern Gaza past week.

In the Past week, Katz warned of intensified strikes if the incoming rocket fire continued.

Rocket fire had become less frequent as the war dragged on but has recently intensified, as Israel has pressed a major land and air offensive in the territory’s north since early October.

Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli data.

Israel’s military offensive killed 45,805 people in Gaza, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the territory’s health ministry which the United Nations considers reliable, while 1,208 people, mostly civilians, were killed at the beginning of the war, according to official Israeli data.

In the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Palestinian health ministry said Israeli forces had killed a teenager during a raid on a refugee camp near the city of Nablus on Sunday.

Mutaz Ahmad Abdul Wahab Madani, 17, was ‘killed and two others were wounded by occupation forces’ gunfire during a raid near Askar Camp east of Nablus’, said a ministry statement.

The Israeli military did not immediately comment.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territory had killed at least 23 people on Sunday, while the military said it had targeted more than ‘100 terror targets’ over the past two days.

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Israeli strikes kill 23 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 06 January, 2025, 00:50

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that Israeli strikes in the Palestinian territory had killed at least 23 people on Sunday, while the military said it had targeted more than ‘100 terror targets’ over the past two days.

At least 11 people were killed in an air strike on a house in northern Gaza’s Sheikh Radwan area early on Sunday, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal said, adding that the dead included women and children.

‘Rescuers are still searching for five people trapped under the rubble of the house,’ he said.

‘Rescuers are using their bare hands because we lack proper equipment.’

Bassal accused Israeli forces of ‘directing violent air strikes on homes where displaced people were sheltering, claiming they were targeting resistance fighters’.

In a separate strike, five people were killed when the house of the Abu Jarbou family was struck in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the civil defence said.

Another strike killed four people in the town of Jabalia, the agency added.

The Israeli military said Sunday that it had struck more than 100 ‘terror targets’ in the Gaza Strip over the past two days. Several of the strikes targeted sites from which Palestinian militants had been firing projectiles into Israel in recent days, the military said.

‘The IAF (air force) struck over 100 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, and eliminated dozens of Hamas terrorists’ in the past two days, a military statement said.

Gaza’s civil defence agency reported that on Saturday more than 30 people were killed in Israeli strikes.

Last week, Israeli defence minister Israel Katz warned of intensified Israeli strikes if the incoming rocket fire continued.

The renewed fire from Gaza has triggered air raid sirens in Israeli communities that were largely destroyed during Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

Though less frequent than in the early days of the nearly 15-month-long war, there has been a recent spate of launches by militants in the devastated Palestinian territory.

The latest violence in Gaza comes as indirect negotiations for a hostage release deal and ceasefire had resumed in Qatar.

Mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been engaged for months in efforts to strike a deal to end the war and secure the release of dozens of hostages still held in Gaza.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said on Sunday that 88 people were killed in the Palestinian territory in the past 24 hours, taking the overall death toll of the war to 45,805.

The ministry also said in a statement that at least 1,09,064 people had been wounded in nearly 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas, triggered by the Palestinian group’s October 7, 2023 attack.​

 

[Saif]

Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces pounded the Palestinian territory on Thursday, killing at least 12 people including three girls, 15 months into the war...

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Israeli strikes kill 12 in Gaza
Agence France-Presse . Palestinian Territories 10 January, 2025, 00:30

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces pounded the Palestinian territory on Thursday, killing at least 12 people including three girls, 15 months into the war.

The latest strikes came as Qatar, Egypt, and the United States mediate negotiations in Doha between Israel and Hamas militants for a deal to end the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of hostages.

Three girls and their father were killed when an air strike hit their house in Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, the civil defence agency reported.

Local paramedic Mahmud Awad said he helped transfer the bodies of two girls and their father, Mahmud Abu Kharuf to a hospital.

‘Their bodies were found under the rubble of the house that the occupation bombed in the Nuseirat camp,’ Awad said. He added that the body of the third girl had been found earlier by residents.

In a separate strike, eight people were killed when their house was struck in the town of Jabalia in northern Gaza, where the army has focused its offensive since October 6.

Several more were wounded in that strike, the civil defence agency said.

Israeli air strikes and shelling continues across Gaza, even as mediators push on with their efforts to halt the fighting and secure a deal for the release of hostages still held in Gaza.

On Wednesday, US secretary of state Antony Blinken said in Paris that a ceasefire was ‘very close’.

‘I hope that we can get it over the line in the time that we have,’ Blinken said, referring to president-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

But if not, ‘I believe that when we get that deal — and we’ll get it — it’ll be on the basis of the plan that president Joe Biden put before the world back in May.’

In May, Biden unveiled a three-phase plan for the release of the hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza.​

 

[Saif]

Gaza death toll 40% higher than recorded

Says Lancet study; Israeli forces bomb a group of Palestinians in eastern Gaza City

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Gaza death toll 40% higher than recorded
Says Lancet study; Israeli forces bomb a group of Palestinians in eastern Gaza City

Buildings lie in ruin in Beit Hanoun in the Gaza Strip, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, as seen from southern Israel, January 7, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Kai Pfaffenbach

Research published in The Lancet medical journal today estimates that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of Israeli offensive was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the Palestinian territory's health ministry.

The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas.

Up to June 30 last year, the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza reported a death toll of 37,877 in the offensive.

However, the new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries to estimate that there were between 55,298 and 78,525 deaths from traumatic injuries in Gaza by that time.

Meanwhile, Gaza's rescue service yesterday said in a brief statement on Telegram that the Israeli forces bombed a group of Palestinians near the Shujayea roundabout in the east of Gaza City, reports Al Jazeera online.

The study's best death toll estimate was 64,260, which would mean the health ministry had under-reported the number of deaths to that point by 41 percent.

That toll represented 2.9 percent of Gaza's pre-war population, "or approximately one in 35 inhabitants," the study said.

The UK-led group of researchers estimated that 59 percent of the deaths were women, children and the elderly.

The toll was only for deaths from traumatic injuries, so did not include deaths from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble, reports AFP.

On Thursday, Gaza's health ministry said that 46,006 people had died over the full 15 months of offensive.

Israel has repeatedly questioned the credibility of the Gaza health ministry's figures, but the United Nations have said they are reliable.

The researchers used a statistical method called "capture–recapture" that has previously been used to estimate the death toll in conflicts around the world.

The analysis used data from three different lists, the first provided by the Gaza health ministry of the bodies identified in hospitals or morgues.

The second list was from an online survey launched by the health ministry in which Palestinians reported the deaths of relatives.

The third was sourced from obituaries posted on social media platforms such as X, Instagram, Facebook and Whatsapp, when the identity of the deceased could be verified.

"We only kept in the analysis those who were confirmed dead by their relatives or confirmed dead by the morgues and the hospital," lead study author Zeina Jamaluddine, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, told AFP.

The researchers scoured the lists, searching for duplicates.​

 

[Saif]

32 killed in 48 hours in Gaza

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza yesterday said that 32 people were killed in the Palestinian territory over the past 48 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,537.

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32 killed in 48 hours in Gaza

Photo: AFP

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza yesterday said that 32 people were killed in the Palestinian territory over the past 48 hours, taking the overall death toll to 46,537.

The ministry said at least 109,571 people have been wounded in more than 15 months of conflict between Israel and Hamas.

The ministry of health added 499 deaths to its death toll on Saturday, specifying they have now completed the data and confirmed identities on files whose information was incomplete.

A source in the ministry's data collection department told AFP that all the 499 additional deaths were from the past several months.

Meanwhile, Gaza's civil defence agency said an Israeli air strike on a school-turned-shelter yesterday killed eight people, including two children, while the Israeli military said it targeted Hamas militants.

Agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal confirmed eight people, including two children and two women, were killed by Israeli shelling on the Halwa school in the northern Gaza city of Jabalia.

The attack was the latest in a series of Israeli strikes on school buildings housing displaced people in Gaza, where fighting has raged for more than 14 months.

The number of dead in Gaza has become a matter of bitter debate since Israel launched its military campaign against Hamas in response to the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented attack last year.

Israeli authorities have repeatedly questioned the credibility of the Gaza health ministry's figures.

But a study published Friday by British medical journal The Lancet estimated that the death toll in Gaza during the first nine months of the Israel-Hamas war was around 40 percent higher than recorded by the health ministry.

The new peer-reviewed study used data from the ministry, an online survey and social media obituaries, but only counted deaths from traumatic injuries. It did not include those from a lack of health care or food, or the thousands of missing believed to be buried under rubble.

The UN considers the Gaza health ministry's numbers to be reliable.​

 

[Saif]

Top Israeli security delegation in Doha for Gaza talks

A top-level Israeli security delegation arrived in Qatar yesterday for talks on a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a possible sign of so-far elusive agreements nearing.

www.thedailystar.net

Top Israeli security delegation in Doha for Gaza talks

A child feeds another a spoonful of food as they sit atop graves at a cemetery where families displaced by conflict are taking shelter in Deir el-Balah in the central Gaza Strip yesterday. Photo: AFP

A top-level Israeli security delegation arrived in Qatar yesterday for talks on a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, in a possible sign of so-far elusive agreements nearing.

Qatar and fellow mediators Egypt and the United States are making renewed efforts to reach a deal to halt the fighting in the enclave and free the remaining 98 hostages held there before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.

Netanyahu's office said on Saturday that the delegation includes Mossad Head David Barnea, the head of the Shin Bet domestic security service Ronen Bar and the military's head of the hostage brief, Nitzan Alon.

Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, met on Saturday with Netanyahu, after having met on Friday with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.

Israeli and Palestinian officials have said since Thursday that some progress has been made in the indirect talks between Israel and militant group Hamas but did not elaborate. The sides have been keeping a tight lid on the details being worked out.

It is unclear how they will bridge one of the biggest gaps that has persisted throughout previous rounds of talks: Hamas demands an end to the war while Israel says it won't end the war as long as Hamas rules Gaza and poses a threat to Israelis.

Since October 7, 2023, more than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, with much of the enclave laid to waste and gripped by a humanitarian crisis, and most of its population displaced.

On Saturday, the Palestinian civil emergency service said eight people were killed, including two women and two children, in an Israeli airstrike on a former school sheltering displaced families in Jabalia, in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said the strike had targeted Hamas militants who were operating at the school and that it had taken measures to reduce the risk of harm to civilians.

Later on Saturday, the Gaza Civil Emergency Service said five people were killed and several others were wounded in two Israeli strikes. One of the two strikes killed three people in a house near the Daraj neighborhood in Gaza City.​

 

[Saif]

‘On the brink’ of Gaza truce: Biden

‘In the war between Israel and Hamas, we’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,’ Biden said in a farewell speech at the State Department...

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‘On the brink’ of Gaza truce: Biden
Agence France-Presse . Jerusalem, Undefined 14 January, 2025, 03:45

The US president, Joe Biden, said on Monday that a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel was ‘on the brink’ of being finalised, even as heavy fighting rocked the Palestinian territory.

Since early January, international mediators Qatar, Egypt and the United States have intensified efforts to reach a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza, which would help facilitate the release of hostages still being held there.

‘In the war between Israel and Hamas, we’re on the brink of a proposal that I laid out in detail months ago finally coming to fruition,’ Biden said in a farewell speech at the State Department.

Earlier on Monday, White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said that a truce deal could be finalised this week.

‘I’m not making a promise or prediction, but it is there for the taking and we are going to work to make it happen,"’Sullivan told reporters.

A source familiar with the negotiations in Doha told AFP there had been ‘significant progress on the remaining sticking points’ in the latest talks in Qatar.

This has led to a new ‘concrete’ proposal being presented to the parties, the source said on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

‘Israel really wants to release the hostages and is working hard to secure a deal,’ Israeli foreign minister Gideon Saar said at a press conference.

‘The current round of negotiations is the most serious and deep and has made significant progress,’ a Palestinian official close to Hamas told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Israel’s far-right finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, however, warned that he would oppose any deal that stopped the war.

‘The proposed agreement is a catastrophe for Israel’s national security,’ Smotrich said on X. ‘We will not be part of a surrender deal that involves releasing dangerous terrorists, halting the war, squandering the hard-won achievements paid for in blood and abandoning many hostages still in captivity.

‘Now is the time to intensify our efforts, using all available force to fully secure and cleanse the Gaza Strip,’ he added.

Smotrich, an outspoken member of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, has repeatedly opposed halting the war in Gaza.

His comments came amid rising calls by Israelis, particularly families of hostages held in Gaza, to reach an accord that would bring their loved ones home.

Smotrich’s remarks underline the sharp divides in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition over a deal.

But Netanyahu could nonetheless muster enough support to pass the deal through his cabinet, even without Smotrich.

Successive rounds of negotiations held in the past year repeatedly failed to produce a deal.

Among the key sticking points in the talks have been disagreements over the permanence of any ceasefire and the scale of humanitarian aid for the Palestinian territory.

Other points of contention include the return of displaced Gazans to their homes, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Palestinian territory and the reopening of border crossings.

Netanyahu has firmly rejected a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and remains opposed to any Palestinian governance of the territory.

The war in Gaza was sparked on October 7, 2023 when 1,210 people were killed on the Israeli side, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

On that day, Hamas also reportedly took 251 people hostage, 94 of whom are still allegedly being held in Gaza, including 34 the Israeli military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed 46,584 people, a majority of them civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory's health ministry that the United Nations says are reliable.

Even as intense diplomatic efforts continued towards a truce deal, Israeli forces pounded Gaza City on Monday, killing more than 50 Palestinians, according to civilian rescuers.

‘They bombed schools, homes and even gatherings of people,’ Mahmud Bassal, spokesman for the civil defence agency, told AFP.

Eleven people were killed and several others injured when an Israeli strike targeted a house belonging to the Jaradah and Abu Khater families in the city’s Shujaiya neighbourhood, the agency said in a statement.

The remaining casualties occurred in other strikes across Gaza City throughout the day, it added.

The Israeli military said it was looking into those reports.

‘There is no room in hospitals to receive the wounded,’ Bassal said.

The Israeli military also suffered losses on Monday, with five of its soldiers killed in fighting in northern Gaza, the military said in a statement.

The latest deaths bring the Israeli military’s losses to 408 in the Gaza military campaign since it began a ground offensive against Hamas in the Palestinian territory on October 27, 2023.​

 

[Saif]

Final draft of Gaza truce deal presented after ‘breakthrough’

Mediators gave Israel and Hamas a final draft of a deal on Monday to end the war in Gaza, an official briefed on the negotiations said, after a midnight “breakthrough” in talks attended by envoys of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. The official said the text for a ceasefire and release

thefinancialexpress.com.bd

Final draft of Gaza truce deal presented after ‘breakthrough’
REUTERS
Published :
Jan 13, 2025 19:17
Updated :
Jan 13, 2025 19:17

Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a school sheltering displaced people, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City January 13, 2025. Photo : REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas

Mediators gave Israel and Hamas a final draft of a deal on Monday to end the war in Gaza, an official briefed on the negotiations said, after a midnight “breakthrough” in talks attended by envoys of both Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

The official said the text for a ceasefire and release of hostages was presented by Qatar to both sides at talks in Doha, which included the chiefs of Israel’s Mossad and Shin Bet spy agencies and Qatar’s prime minister.

The official said Steve Witkoff, who will become US envoy when Trump returns to the US presidency next week, attended the talks. A US source said the outgoing Biden administration’s envoy Brett McGurk was also there.

“The next 24 hours will be pivotal to reaching the deal,” the official said, characterising the draft as the outcome of a breakthrough reached in the early hours of Monday.

Israel’s Kan radio, citing an Israeli official, reported on Monday that Israeli and Hamas delegations in Qatar had both received a draft, and that the Israeli delegation had briefed Israel’s leaders. Israel, Hamas and the foreign ministry of Qatar did not respond to requests for confirmation or comment.

Officials on both sides, while stopping short of confirming that a final draft had been reached, described progress at the talks.

A senior Israeli official said a deal could be sealed within a few days if Hamas replies to a proposal. A Palestinian official close to the talks said information from Doha was “very promising”, adding: “Gaps were being narrowed and there is a big push toward an agreement if all goes well to the end.”

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have worked for more than a year on talks to end the war in Gaza, so far fruitlessly.

HELL TO PAY

Both sides have agreed for months broadly on the principle of halting the fighting in return for the release of hostages held by Hamas and Palestinian detainees held by Israel. However, Hamas has always insisted that the deal must lead to a permanent end to the war and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, while Israel has said it will not end the war until Hamas is dismantled.

Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration is now widely seen in the region as a de facto deadline. The president-elect has said there would be “hell to pay” unless hostages held by Hamas are freed before he takes office, while outgoing President Biden has also pushed hard for a deal before he leaves.

The official said talks went until the early hours of Monday, with Witkoff pushing the Israeli delegation in Doha and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani pushing Hamas officials to finalise an agreement.

The head of Egypt’s general intelligence agency Hassan Mahmoud Rashad was also in the Qatari capital as part of the talks, the official said.

Trump envoy Witkoff has travelled to Qatar and Israel several times since late November. He was in Doha on Friday and travelled to Israel to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday before returning to Doha.

Biden also spoke on Sunday by phone with Netanyahu, stressing “the immediate need for a ceasefire in Gaza and return of the hostages with a surge in humanitarian aid enabled by a stoppage in the fighting under the deal,” the White House said.

Israel launched its assault in Gaza after Hamas fighters stormed across its borders in October 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to Palestinian health officials, with much of the enclave laid to waste and most of its population displaced.

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a hardline nationalist who has opposed previous attempts to reach a deal, denounced the latest proposals as a “surrender” and a “catastrophe for the national security of the state of Israel”.

Bloodshed continued in Gaza on Monday, with Israeli military strikes killing at least 21 people, medics said, including five killed in an Israeli strike at a Gaza City school sheltering displaced families.

For the last several months, fighting has been particularly intense along the northern edge of Gaza, where Israel says it is trying to prevent Hamas from regrouping and Palestinians accuse Israel of seeking to permanently depopulate a buffer zone.

Hamas armed wing spokesman Abu Ubaida said the group’s fighters attacked Israeli forces in the area killing at least 10 soldiers and injuring dozens of others in the past 72 hours. Israel confirmed on Saturday that four soldiers had been killed.​