Hamas official says Gaza mediators intensifying ceasefire efforts

A senior Hamas official told the BBC that the mediators had intensified their efforts to negotiate a new Liberation contract for ceasefire and hostage in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain blocked.

The comments came while US President Donald Trump said that “great progress” had been made since Israel and Iran ended their 12 -day war on Tuesday, and that his envoy Steve Witkoff thought that an agreement between Israel and Hamas was “very close”.

Israeli attacks across Gaza killed at least 45 Palestinians on Wednesday, some of which were looking for aid, said the Ministry of Health managed by Hamas.

Meanwhile, the Israeli army announced that seven soldiers had been killed Tuesday in a bomb attack claimed by Hamas.

“I think that great progress is made on Gaza, I think that because of this attack we made,” said President Trump to journalists in Brussels on Wednesday, referring to American air strikes on Iranian nuclear installations made this weekend in the middle of the conflict between Israel and Iran.

“I think we are going to have very good news. I spoke to Steve Witkoff … [and] He told me that Gaza was very close, “he added.

Shortly after Trump spoke, the senior Hamas official told the BBC that the mediators were “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a cease-fire agreement”.

However, he added that the group had “not received a new proposal so far”.

An Israeli official also told Haaretz newspaper that there was no progress in negotiations and that major disagreements are not resolved.

The efforts of the United States, Qatar and Egypt to negotiate an agreement in a standstill at the end of May, when Witkoff said that Hamas had asked for “completely unacceptable” amendments to an American proposal sustained by Israel for a truce of 60 days, during which half of the living Israeli hostages and half of those who died would be released.

Israel resumed his military offensive in Gaza on March 18, collapsing a two-month-old ceasefire. He said he wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release his hostages. Fifty are still in Gaza, at least 20 of which are supposed to be alive.

Israel also imposed a total blockage of humanitarian aid deliveries in Gaza in early March, which partially relaxed after 11 weeks after the pressure of the American allies and the warnings of global experts that half a million people faced the famine.

At the same time, Israel and the United States have supported the creation of a new aid distribution mechanism managed by Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which aims to bypass the UN as a main provider of assistance to the Palestinians. They said that the GHF system would prevent aid to be stolen by Hamas, which the group denies.

The GHF, which uses American private security entrepreneurs, said it has distributed food packages containing more than 44 million meals since it started operating on May 26, with more than 2.4 million discounts on three sites on Wednesday.

However, the UN and the other aid groups refused to cooperate with the GHF, accusing it of cooperating with the objectives of Israel in a way that violates fundamental humanitarian principles.

They also expressed the alarm in the face of the daily reports of the death of the Palestinians near the group’s sites, which are inside Israeli military areas.

According to the Gaza Ministry of Health, at least 549 people were killed and 4,000 injured while they have been trying to collect aid since the GHF began to distribute aid on May 26.

Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Civil Defense Agency led by Hamas said that six people had been killed when Israeli forces opened fire to crowds while waiting for nearly one of the GHF food distribution centers in the center of Gaza.

Three others were killed near a GHF site in the southern city of Rafah, he added.

However, the Israeli army said it was “not aware of any incidents with victims in these regions”, while the GHF said that the relationships of these nearby incidents were false.

In Gaza City, funerals were detained for some of the 33 people who, according to the Ministry of Health, had been killed the day before pending help.

“I say and repeat a million times,” Abu Mohammed told the news agency in Reuters. “These help points are not aid points, they are death points.”

The spokesman for UNICEF, James Elder, who has just visited Gaza, said: “As long as a population is refused food, people are offered this deadly choice and, unfortunately, because it is in a combat zone, that cannot improve.”

The spokesman for the Civil Defense also said that six other people, including a child, had been killed in an air strike in an early house in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the center of Gaza.

Five others were killed when houses in the neighboring city of Deir al-Balah, he said.

More than 860 Palestinians were reported by Israeli forces in Gaza during the Israeli-Iranian conflict, which started when Israel launched an air campaign targeting the nuclear and ballistic missile programs from Iran. Iran has launched missile dams to Israel in response.

The inhabitants of Gaza were divided into their assessments of what the ceasefire intended for the territory.

Some considered the weakening of Iran, the main donor in Hamas, as a potentially positive stage towards the realization of a truce in Gaza because it could force the group to mitigate its requests.

Others, however, feared that the end of the conflict would allow Israel to redirect its military concentration on Gaza and to intensify its air and land operations.

A man in Khan Younis, Nader Ramadan, told the BBC that it was like “everything had worsened” in Gaza during the conflict.

“THE [Israeli] The bombings have intensified, the damage has increased and the foray has extended in certain areas … We only felt destruction, “he said.

Adel Abu Reda said the most difficult thing was the lack of access to help. He said that the items were looted and sold for inflated prices, and that civilians were under Israeli fire when they were trying to have food.

“What are we supposed to do?” He asked. “We feel filming and murder all the time.”

In Israel, the army announced that seven of its soldiers had been killed on Tuesday in combat in the south of Gaza-the deadliest of this type since the ceasefire collapsed.

Brigen Effie Defrin spokesperson said that an explosive device had been attached to an armored vehicle in the Khan Younis region, and that the explosion caused the vehicle. Helicopters and rescue forces have made several unsuccessful attempts to save them, he added.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it was “a difficult day for the people of Israel”.

Deaths have renewed the pressure on Netanyahu to agree with a ceasefire, the leader of an ultra-Orthodox Jewish party in his power coalition saying that Israel should end the war and bring all the hostages home.

“I do not understand what we are fighting for and for what purpose … When the soldiers are killed all the time?” Moshe Gafni of United Torah Judaism told the Israeli Parliament.

The Israeli army launched a campaign in Gaza in response to the attack on October 7, 2023 of Hamas against Israel, during which around 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

At least 56,157 people have been killed in Gaza since then, according to the Ministry of Health of the territory.

Additional report by Alice Cuddy in Jerusalem