No more concessions, Hamas says
PALESTINIAN militant group Hamas said yesterday it was unwilling to make more concessions to Israel in negotiations over a ceasefire for Gaza, although talks were still under way in Cairo aimed at pausing Israel’s sevenmonthold offensive.
Israel continued tank and aerial strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah yesterday and has threatened a major assault on it. Its forces moved in via the Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Wednesday, cutting off a vital aid route and the only exit for the evacuation of wounded patients. Izzat ElReshiq, a member of Hamas’ political office in Qatar, said the group would not go beyond a ceasefire proposal it accepted on Tuesday, which would also entail the release of some Israeli hostages in Gaza and Palestinian women and children detained in Israel.
‘‘Israel isn’t serious about reaching an agreement and it is using the negotiation as a cover to invade Rafah and occupy the crossing,’’ Reshiq said.
There was no immediate comment from Israel, which on Tuesday declared the threephase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable.
Delegations from Hamas, Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar have been meeting in Cairo since Wednesday.
The US said on Wednesday Hamas had revised its ceasefire proposal and the revision could overcome an impasse in negotiations.
Just a few hours before Hamas’ latest statement, the US continued to say the two sides were not far apart.
The US aims to stave off a full Israeli invasion of Rafah, and a senior US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US had paused a shipment of 1800 907kg bombs and 1700 227kg bombs.
US President Joe Biden said yesterday Israel had used those bombs to kill Palestinian civilians.
‘‘Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a consequence of those bombs and other ways in which they go after population centres,’’ he told CNN.
Biden also publicly vowed for the first time to withhold weapons from Israel if its forces made a major invasion of Rafah.
‘‘I made it clear that if they go into Rafah . . . I’m not supplying the weapons,'' he told CNN. Biden's comments increase the pressure on Israel to refrain from a fullscale assault on Rafah.
Israel’s UN ambassador, Gilad Erdan, called the US decision ‘‘very disappointing’’.
Israel says it must hit Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters it says are holed up there. But the city is also a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled combat farther north in Gaza.
Hamas said its fighters were battling Israeli forces in Rafah’s east yesterday and Islamic Jihad’s fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles near the city’s longabandoned airport.
Israeli shells landed in the middle of Rafah wounding at least 25 people yesterday, medics said. Residents said an Israeli air strike killed four people and wounded 16 others in western Rafah.
The Israeli military said it troops had discovered Hamas infrastructure in several places in eastern Rafah and was conducting targeted raids on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and airstrikes across the Gaza Strip.
The United Nations, Gaza residents and humanitarian groups say further Israeli incursion into Rafah will lead to a humanitarian catastrophe.
A UN official said no fuel or aid had entered the Gaza Strip due to the military operation, a situation ‘‘disastrous for the humanitarian response’’ in Gaza where more than half the population was suffering catastrophic hunger.
The World Health Organisation said yesterday there was only enough fuel to run health services in the south of Gaza for three more days. It also said that Abu Yousef alNajjar Hospital in Rafah was already no longer functional, one of three hospitals in the city.
The United Nations Population Fund said yesterday the main maternity hospital in Rafah had stopped admitting patients.
Israel has told civilians in Rafah, many uprooted several times already, to go to an ‘‘expanded humanitarian zone’’ in alMawasi, 20km away.
Estimates of how many Palestinians have left Rafah this week ranged from 10,000, according to the UN, to tens of thousands, according to the Hamasrun Gaza government media office.
Israel carried out heavy airstrikes in south Lebanon and Hizbollah said it had launched explosive drones and rockets at Israeli targets yesterday as
Israel’s defence minister warned of a ‘‘hot summer’’ in the border region.
Israeli attacks killed three people in Lebanon, security sources said.
The conflict between Hizbollah and Israel has rumbled on since October in parallel to the Gaza war, uprooting tens of thousands of people on both sides of the frontier and fuelling concern of a bigger war between the heavily armed adversaries. — Reuters