Report: Israel, Hamas talks making progress
CAIRO » Israel and Hamas are making progress toward another cease-fire and hostage-release deal, officials said Tuesday, as negotiations went on and Israel threatened to expand its offensive to Gaza’s southern edge, where some 1.4 million Palestinians have sought refuge.
The talks continued in Egypt a day after Israeli forces rescued two captives in Rafah, the packed southern town along the Egyptian border, in a raid that killed at least 74 Palestinians, according to local health officials, and caused heavy destruction.
A cease-fire deal, on the other hand, would give people in Gaza a desperately needed respite from the war, now in its fifth month, and offer freedom for at least some of the estimated 100 people still held captive in Gaza. Qatar, the United States and Egypt have sought to broker a deal in the face of starkly disparate positions expressed publicly by both Israel and Hamas.
Israel has made destroying Hamas’ governing and military capabilities and freeing the hostages the main goals of its war, which was launched after thousands of Hamasled militants rampaged through southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 people captive. Tens of thousands of Israelis were displaced from destroyed communities.
The war has brought unprecedented destruction to the Gaza Strip, with more than 28,000 people killed, more than 70% of them women and minors, according to local health officials. Vast swaths of the territory have been flattened by Israel’s offensive, around 80% of the population has been displaced. In other developments:
• South Africa, which has lodged genocide allegations against Israel at the International Court of Justice, said Tuesday that it filed an “urgent request” with the court to consider whether Israel’s military operations in Rafah constitute a breach of provisional orders handed down by the justices last month. Those orders called on Israel to take greater measures to spare civilians.
Israel has adamantly denied the genocide allegation. It blames Hamas for the high death toll because the militants operate in dense residential areas.
• Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia, fired missiles into northern Israel on Tuesday that injured at least two people, emergency officials said, amid a fresh diplomatic push to end months of clashes along the border.
Hezbollah said that it had launched two separate attacks into Israel — one aimed at Israeli soldiers and the other at a police building in the northern town of Kiryat Shmona.
A 15-year-old boy and a 47-year-old woman were seriously wounded in Kiryat Shmona, according to Magen David Adom, Israel’s nonprofit emergency medical service. They had gotten out of the car when an anti-tank missile hit nearby, only to be injured when another landed, said Ofir Yehezkeli, Kiryat Shmona’s deputy mayor.
Israel and Hezbollah — an ally of Hamas in the Gaza Strip — have engaged in near-daily cross-border strikes since the deadly Hamas-led Oct. 7 attacks in Israel. The clashes have displaced more than 150,000 people from their homes on both sides of the Israel-Lebanon border.
The United States and others have engaged in diplomatic efforts to reduce the tensions. A Western diplomat said Tuesday that France had presented a proposal to Israel, Lebanon’s government and Hezbollah. The French proposal was first reported by Reuters. The proposal details a 10-day process of de-escalation and calls for Hezbollah to withdraw its fighters to a distance of miles from Lebanon’s border with Israel, according to the diplomat.