Netanyahu urged to accept truce

Israel is coming under huge diplomatic pressure to accept a three-stage ceasefire surprisingly agreed by Hamas yesterday, despite Benjamin Netanyahu’s determination to pursue a planned offensive in Rafah. The prime minister’s office said the proposal Hamas accepted was “far from Israel’s essential demands” but that it would nonetheless send negotiators to continue talks. At the same time, the Israeli military said it was conducting “targeted strikes” against Hamas in eastern Rafah.

The US Department of State said it had still not seen any credible plan for such an operation as Israel ordered 100,000 people to evacuate the east of the city earlier in the day. Spokesman Matthew Miller said Washington would discuss the Hamas response with its allies in the coming hours, and that a deal was “absolutely achievable”.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, was one of the first leaders to call on Israel to accept the ceasefire. Speaking after a cabinet meeting yesterday evening, he urged western countries to increase pressure on Israel’s leadership to accept.

France has already said it would be a war crime for Israel to attempt forcibly to displace thousands of Palestinian civilians living in camps in Rafah on the Egypt-Gaza border.

The UN secretary-general, António Guterres, was “deeply concerned by the indications that a large-scale military operation in Rafah may be imminent”, according to his spokesperson, who urged Israel and Hamas “to go the extra mile needed to make an agreement come true and stop the present suffering”.

On Sunday it appeared that the indirect talks in Egypt had collapsed, largely due to a Hamas demand that the ceasefire become permanent and not be confined to three stages.

But by yesterday morning, Netanyahu had rejected anything but total victory and appeared to be preparing to launch the first stage of the Rafah offensive with the order for civilians to evacuate.

Qatar strove to keep the talks alive, with the help of the CIA director, William Burns, who had flown from Cairo to Doha to speak to the Hamas delegation. Just as it appeared as if the negotiations would fall through, the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, informed Qatar’s mediators that it was prepared to accept a ceasefire, knocking the ball back into Netanyahu’s court.

Hamas negotiators also said they would be travelling from Doha to Cairo today to finalise the agreement.

An Israeli official quoted by the Reuters news agency dismissed the move, describing the proposal that Hamas had accepted as a “softened” version of an Egyptian proposal, which included “farreaching” conclusions that Israel could not accept. “This would appear to be a ruse intended to make Israel look like the side refusing a deal,” said the official.

But officials who spoke later said while it was “not the framework Israel proposed”, it was being examined.

Israel’s options may, however, be narrowing as the west, led by the US, insisted that an attack on Rafah was not achievable without unacceptable loss of life and longterm damage to Israel’s relations with western and Gulf states.

The most direct warning to Israel came from the French foreign ministry, which told the Israeli government it would be committing a war crime under international law if it sought to forcibly displace civilians from Rafah. The ministry’s warning followed a call on Sunday between Netanyahu and Emmanuel Macron, in which the French president restated his opposition to a fullscale offensive. The Jordanian foreign minister, Ayman Safadi said the international community would be left with an “indelible stain” if it allowed Israel’s attack. “Another massacre of the Palestinians is in the making,” he said. “All must act now to prevent it. ”

Egypt, which like Jordan has a peace deal with Israel, called on Israel to “exercise the utmost restraint and avoid further escalation at this sensitive time in the process of ceasefire negotiations, and to spare the blood of Palestinian civilians who have been exposed to an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.”

European diplomats had seemed unwilling to accept claims that the evacuation order was simply a limited operation to move some displaced Palestinians and so force Hamas to accept the terms Israel was offering on a ceasefire and hostage deal. The EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, said yesterday: “Israel’s evacuation orders to civilians in Rafah portend the worst: more war and famine.”

It remains to be seen whether the US would be willing to ban arms exports to Israel as an ultimate deterrent. Netanyahu has said he is willing to see Israel isolated internationally in its attempt to secure a final victory over Hamas.

‘Another massacre of Palestinians is in the making … all must act now to prevent it’

Ayman Safadi Foreign minister, Jordan