US secretary of state Antony Blinken has urged Israel and Hamas to agree a ceasefire and hostage deal as fresh strikes were reported in Rafah overnight and into Monday morning.
Mr Blinken called Israeli war cabinet member Benny Gantz and the country’s defence minister Yoav Gallant to discuss the deal, the state department said in a pair of statements on Sunday night.
Mr Blinken “commended” Israel on the proposal and “emphasised that Hamas should take the deal without delay”.
Hamas has said it “views positively” what US president Joe Biden described as an Israeli proposal.
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White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said on Sunday that if Hamas agrees to the deal to end the Gaza war the United States expected Israel to also accept the plan.
“This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal...then Israel would say yes,” Mr Kirby said in an interview with ABC News. “We’re waiting for an official response from Hamas.”
An aide to Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday that Israel had accepted a framework deal for winding down the war on Gaza now being advanced by Mr Biden, though he described it as flawed and in need of much more work.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy adviser to Mr Netanyahu, said the Biden proposal was “a deal we agreed to...it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them”.
Fighting has continued with Israel’s military reporting air strikes and ground combat on Sunday, according to Agence France-Presse.
Gaza’s European hospital reported on Sunday evening that three people were injured in a strike on a neighbourhood in northern Rafah, while witnesses reported multiple injuries and deaths in a strike early Monday on a home west of the city.
Witnesses said Israeli Apache helicopters struck central Rafah on Sunday, while the Palestinian Red Crescent said it was “very difficult” to access the city because of the Israeli bombardment.
An Israeli who went missing during the October 7th attack by Hamas-led Palestinian gunmen, and was presumed to be among hostages taken to the Gaza Strip, has been located dead in the border village where he had lived, Israeli media said on Monday.
Israel’s military confirmed the identification of Dolev Yehud’s remains, saying this required lengthy forensics. It said he was killed by Hamas during the rampage in Kibbutz Nir Oz, many of whose residents died or were abducted.
Aid shipments into southern Gaza are being squeezed out by commercial convoys, humanitarian organisations say, at a time when Israel’s military push into Rafah has choked off supply routes critical to feeding hundreds of thousands of people.
Deliveries of food, medicine and other aid into Gaza fell by two-thirds after Israel began its ground operation on May 7th, UN figures show. But overall the number of trucks entering Gaza rose in May compared with April, according to Israeli officials.
Part of the reason for the difference in accounts of what supplies reached the strip is a rise in commercial shipments. In May the Israeli military lifted a ban on the sale of food to Gaza from Israel and the occupied West Bank, Reuters reported last week. Traders got the green light to resume buying fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and other goods.
Inside Gaza residents say there is more food in markets but prices are many times higher than pre-war levels, and after months of fighting and displacement few people can afford to buy much. A group of aid agencies warned this week that there was a “mirage of improved access” when efforts to feed Palestinians were on the verge of collapse.
Overall, however, Israel says the average daily number of trucks going into Gaza rose in May to about 350 from about 300 in April. The “vast majority” of recent deliveries passed through Kerem Shalom, said Shimon Freedman, spokesperson for Cogat, the Israeli body responsible for humanitarian co-ordination.
There was no priority for commercial shipments, he added. – Agencies