Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike on buildings near the separating wall between Egypt and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on Monday (May 6). - Photo: AP
JERUSALEM (AP): Hamas announced its acceptance on Monday (May 6) of an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its "core demands” and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah. Still, Israel said it would continue negotiations.
The high-stakes diplomatic moves and military brinkmanship left a glimmer of hope alive - but only barely - for an accord that could bring at least a pause in the seven-month-old war that has devastated the Gaza Strip.
Hanging over the wrangling was the threat of an all-out Israeli assault on Rafah, a move the United States strongly opposes and that aid groups warn will be disastrous for some 1.4 million Palestinians taking refuge there.
Hamas's acceptance of the ceasefire deal came hours after Israel ordered an evacuation of some 100,000 Palestinians from the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, signaling an invasion was imminent.
The Israeli regime said it was conducting "targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah. Soon after, Israeli tanks entered Rafah, reaching as close as 200m from Rafah’s crossing with neighboring Egypt, a Palestinian security official and an Egyptian official said. Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to talk to the press.
The reported incursion came a day after four Israeli soldiers died in a mortar attack that Israel said originated near the Rafah crossing.
The Egyptian official said the operation appeared to be limited. The Associated Press could not independently verify the scope of the operation.
Israeli airstrikes also hit elsewhere in Rafah late Monday, killing at least five people, including a child and a woman, hospital officials said.
The Israeli military declined to comment.
Shortly after Hamas said it had accepted the Egyptian-Qatari truce proposal, Israel's War Cabinet decided to continue the Rafah operation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 's office said.
It also said that while the proposal Hamas agreed to "is far from meeting Israel’s core demands,” it would send negotiators to Egypt to work on a deal.
Late Monday, Qatar announced it was sending a team to Egypt as well.
It was not immediately known if the proposal Hamas agreed to was substantially different from one that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed it to accept last week, which Blinken said included significant Israeli concessions.
Egyptian officials said that the proposal called for a ceasefire in multiple stages, starting with a limited hostage release and partial Israeli troop pullbacks within Gaza.
The two sides would also negotiate a "permanent calm” that would lead to a full hostage release and greater Israeli withdrawal out of the territory, they said.
Hamas sought clearer guarantees for its key demand of an end to the war and complete Israeli withdrawal in return for the release of all hostages, but it wasn't clear if any changes were made.
The looming operation in Rafah has raised global alarm with aid agencies warning that an offensive will bring a surge of more civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that has already killed over 34,000 people and devastated the territory.
It could also wreck the humanitarian aid operation based out of Rafah that is keeping Palestinians across the Gaza Strip alive, they say.
Israeli leaflets, text messages and radio broadcasts ordered Palestinians to evacuate the eastern neighborhoods of Rafah, warning that an attack was imminent and anyone who stays "puts themselves and their family members in danger.”
The Israeli regime told people to move to an Israel-declared humanitarian zone called Muwasi, a makeshift camp on the coast.
It said Israel has expanded the size of the zone and that it included tents, food, water and field hospitals.
It wasn’t immediately clear, however, if that was already in place.
Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians are already sheltering in Muwasi. The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it has been providing them with aid. But conditions are squalid, with few sanitation facilities in the largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.
The evacuation order left Palestinians in Rafah wrestling with having to uproot their families once again for an unknown fate, exhausted after months living in sprawling tent camps or crammed into schools or other shelters in and around the city.
Israeli airstrikes on Rafah early Monday killed 22 people, including children and two infants.
Mohammed Jindiyah said that at the beginning of the war, he tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza under heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.
He is complying with Israel's evacuation order this time, but was unsure whether to move to Muwasi or elsewhere.
"We are 12 families, and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.
Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members, including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks, despairing at a new move.
"I have no money or anything. I am seriously tired, as are the children,” she said.
"Maybe it’s more honorable for us to die. We are being humiliated.” - AP
