Gaza ceasefire talks: Hamas officials meet to discuss proposed deal
Hamas officials met on Thursday in Istanbul to discuss the new ceasefire proposals and later issued a statement confirming they were talking to other 'Palestinian factions' before formally announcing a response.
The militant Islamist group has come under immense pressure in recent months, with its military leadership decimated and the Israeli military forcing its fighters out of former strongholds in the southern and central parts of Gaza.
In recent days, Israel has ramped up its offensive, launching an intense wave of airstrikes across Gaza, killing more than 250 Palestinians, according to medical and civil defence officials, including many women and children.
Hardline factions within Hamas have now reluctantly accepted the need for a ceasefire to allow the organisation to regroup and plan a new strategy, one source familiar with the internal debate said.
Since a previous ceasefire collapsed in March, more than 6,000 people have been killed in Gaza and an acute humanitarian crisis has worsened.
Efforts for a new truce in Gaza gathered momentum after the US secured a ceasefire to end the 12-day conflict between Israel and Iran last month.
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, is expected to fly to Washington on Sunday for talks with Trump about the war in Gaza, the recent war between Israel and Iran, and other regional issues.
Netanyahu has long resisted a permanent end to the war in Gaza, partly to retain the support of far-right allies in his ruling coalition. But Israel's successes in the war with Iran have strengthened his political position and opinion polls in Israel show strong support for a deal.
On Tuesday, Trump announced that Israel had accepted the conditions needed to finalise a 60-day ceasefire with Hamas, during which the parties will work to end the war.
Israel's security cabinet met on Thursday night to discuss options for Gaza, including an escalation of the current offensive.
'Judging by the signals from Hamas, there is a high probability that we will start proximity talks in the next few days. If there is consent to proximity talks, there will be a deal,' senior Israeli officials told Channel 12, a major Israeli TV network.
A senior Israeli official close to Netanyahu told Reuters that preparations were now in place to approve the ceasefire deal. Another Israeli source said that an Israeli delegation was preparing to join indirect talks brokered by Qatar and Egypt to cement the deal if Hamas responded positively.
The proposal includes the release of 10 living Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the Hamas attack into southern Israel in October 2023 that triggered the conflict, and the return of the bodies of 18 more in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, an official familiar with the negotiations said on Thursday.
Hamas seized 251 hostages during the 2023 attack. Less than half of the 50 who remain in Gaza are believed to be alive.
Aid would enter Gaza immediately under the agreement, and the Israeli military would carry out a phased withdrawal from parts of the territory, according to the proposal. Negotiations would immediately start on a permanent ceasefire.
'We sure hope it's a done deal, but I think it's all going to be what Hamas is willing to accept,' Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, told Israel's Channel 12 on Thursday. 'One thing is clear: the president wants it to be over. The prime minister wants it to be over. The American people, the Israeli people, want it to be over.'
Speaking to journalists while on his way to a rally in Iowa on Thursday, Trump said: 'I want the people of Gaza to be safe. That's more important than anything else. They've gone through hell.'
Netanyahu visited Israel's Nir Oz kibbutz on Thursday for the first time since the 2023 Hamas attack. The community was one of the worst-hit in the attack, with nearly one in four residents kidnapped or killed.
'I feel a deep commitment – first of all to ensure the return of all of our hostages, all of them. There are still 20 who are alive and there are also those who are deceased, and we will bring them all back,' Netanyahu said.
The Israeli prime minister has been heavily criticised for refusing to take responsibility for the failures that allowed the 2023 attack, during which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and has been repeatedly accused of prioritising his political survival over the fate of the hostages.
Israel's retaliatory military campaign has killed at least 57,00 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians, according to a count by the territory's Ministry of Health that is considered reliable by the United Nations and many western governments.
The Israeli military said it 'follows international law and takes feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm' when striking 'terrorist targets'.
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Reuters
25 minutes ago
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Trump says there could be a Gaza deal next week
WASHINGTON, July 4 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday it was good that Hamas said it had responded in "a positive spirit" to a U.S.-brokered Gaza ceasefire proposal. He told reporters aboard Air Force One there could be a deal on a Gaza ceasefire by next week but that he had not been briefed on the current state of negotiations.
Sky News
34 minutes ago
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Gaza: The man in the room acting as backchannel for Hamas in negotiations with US
Behind the efforts to secure the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release is the remarkable story of one man's unlikely involvement. His name is Bishara Bahbah, he's a Harvard-educated economics professor from Phoenix, Arizona. In April, his phone rang. It was Hamas. Since that phone call, Dr Bahbah has been living temporarily in Qatar where he is in direct contact with officials from Hamas. He has emerged as an important back-channel American negotiator. But how? An inauguration party I first met Dr Bahbah in January. It was the eve of President Trump's inauguration and a group of Arab-Americans had thrown a party at a swanky restaurant in Washington DC's Wharf district. There was a sense of excitement. Arab-Americans were crediting themselves for having helped Trump over the line in the key swing state of Michigan. Despite traditionally being aligned with the Democrats, Arab-Americans had abandoned Joe Biden in large numbers because of his handling of the Gaza war. I'd reported from Michigan weeks earlier and been struck by the overwhelming support for Trump. The vibe essentially was 'it can't get any worse - we may as well give Trump a shot'. Mingling among diplomats from Middle Eastern countries, wealthy business owners and even the president of FIFA, I was introduced to an unassuming man in his late 60s. We got talking and shared stories of his birthplace and my adopted home for a few years - Jerusalem. He told me that he still has the deed to his family's 68 dunum (16 acre) Palestinian orchard. With nostalgia, he explained how he still had his family's UN food card which shows their allocated monthly rations from their time living in a refugee camp and in the Jerusalem's old city. Dr Bahnah left Jerusalem in 1976. He is now a US citizen but told me Jerusalem would always be home. 1:58 He echoed the views I had heard in Michigan, where he had spent many months campaigning as the president of Arab-Americans for Trump. He dismissed my scepticism that Trump would be any better than Biden for the Palestinians. We exchanged numbers and agreed to meet for lunch a few weeks later. A connection with Trump Dr Bahbah invited two Arab-American friends to our lunch. Over burgers and coke, a block from the White House, we discussed their hopes for Gaza under Trump. The three men repeated what I had heard on the campaign trail - that things couldn't get any worse for the Palestinians than they were under Biden. 2:54 Trump, they said, would use his pragmatism and transactional nature to create opportunities. Dr Bahbah displayed to me his own initiative too. He revealed that he got a message to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmoud Abbas, to suggest he ought to write a personal letter of congratulations to President Trump. A letter from Ramallah was on the Oval Office desk on 6 November, a day after the election. It's the sort of gesture Trump notices. It was clear to me that the campaigning efforts and continued support of these three wealthy men had been recognised by the Trump administration. They had become close to key figures in Trump's team - connections that would, in time, pay off. There were tensions along the way. When Trump announced he would "own Gaza", Dr Bahbah was disillusioned. And then came the AI video of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunning themselves in a Gazan wonderland. 0:35 "It is provocative and unacceptable," he told me just after the president posted the video in February. Trump must have thought it was funny, so he posted it. He loves anything with his name on it." Then came the Trump plan to resettle Palestinians out of Gaza. To this, he released a public statement titled Urgent Press Release. "Arab-Americans for Trump firmly rejects President Donald J Trump's suggestion to remove - voluntarily or forcibly - Palestinians in Gaza to Egypt and Jordan," he said. He then changed the name of his alliance, dropping Trump. It became Arab-Americans for Peace. I wondered if the wheels were coming off this unlikely alliance. Was he realising Trump couldn't or wouldn't solve the Palestinian issue? But Dr Bahbah maintained faith in the new president. "I am worried, but at the same time, Trump might be testing the waters to determine what is acceptable…," he told me in late February as the war dragged on. "There is no alternative to the two-state solution." He told me that he expected the president and his team to work on the rebuilding of Gaza and work to launch a process that would culminate in the establishment of a Palestinian state, side by side in peace with Israel. It was, and remains, an expectation at odds with the Trump administration's official policy. The phone call In late April, Dr Bahbah's phone rang. The man at the other end of the line was Dr Ghazi Hamad, a senior member of Hamas. Dr Bahbah and Dr Hamad had never met - they did not know each other. But Hamas had identified Dr Bahbah as the Palestinian-American with the most influence in Trump's administration. Dr Hamad suggested that they could work together - to secure the release of all the hostages in return for a permanent ceasefire. Hamas was already using the Qatari government as a conduit to the Americans but Dr Bahbah represented a second channel through which they hoped they could convince President Trump to increase pressure on Israel. There is a thread of history which runs through this story. It was the widow of former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat who passed Dr Bahbah's number to Dr Hamad. In the 1990s, Dr Bahbah was part of a Palestinian delegation to the multilateral peace talks. He became close to Arafat but he had no experience of a negotiation as delicate and intractable as this. The first step was to build trust. Dr Bahbah contacted Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy. Witkoff and Bahbah had something in common - one a real-estate mogul, the other an academic, neither had any experience in diplomacy. It represented the perfect manifestation of Trump's 'outside the box' methods. But Witkoff was sceptical of Dr Bahbah's proposal at first. Could he really have any success at securing agreement between Israel and Hamas? A gesture to build trust was necessary. Bahbah claims he told his new Hamas contact that they needed to prove to the Trump administration that they were serious about negotiating. Within weeks a remarkable moment more than convinced Dr Bahbah and Witkoff that this new Hamas back-channel could be vitally important. On 12 May, after 584 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli-American Edan Alexander was released. We were told at the time that his release was a result of a direct deal between Hamas and the US. Israel was not involved and the deal was described by Hamas as a "good faith" gesture. Dr Bahbah sees it as his deal. 27:55 Direct talks took place between Dr Bahbah and five Hamas officials in Doha who would then convey messages back to at least 17 other Hamas leadership figures in both Gaza and Cairo. Dr Bahbah in turn conveyed Hamas messages back to Witkoff who was not directly involved in the Hamas talks. A Qatari source told me that Dr Bahbah was "very involved" in the negotiations. But publicly, the White House has sought to downplay his role, with an official telling Axios in May that "he was involved but tangentially". The Israeli government was unaware of his involvement until their own spies discovered the backchannel discussion about the release of Alexander. Since that April phone call, Dr Bahbah has remained in the Qatari capital, with trips to Cairo, trying to help secure a final agreement. He is taking no payment from anyone for his work.
Sky News
2 hours ago
- Sky News
Inside Iran's Evin Prison - as Tehran says damage shows Israel targeted civilians
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