The death toll in Gaza is likely to pass the grim milestone of 30,000 this week, as negotiators try to pin down a ceasefire and hostage-release deal, and the Israeli government presses ahead with plans for an attack on Rafah.
The prime minster, Benjamin Netanyahu, convened the war cabinet late on Saturday for a briefing with negotiators who had been at talks in Paris.
This week, it will meet again to discuss preparations for an assault on Rafah, the southern border town where an estimated 1.5 million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter. A deal might delay that operation, but would not prevent it, Netanyahu said in an interview with CBS.
Negotiators from Israel, Qatar, Egypt and the US have agreed the “basic contours” of an arrangement during weekend talks in Paris, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN, but the final details still have to be hammered out.
Israeli media reported that the prospective deal would allow for the release of 30 or 40 hostages – women, elderly people and the wounded – in exchange for up to 300 Palestinian prisoners, and a ceasefire lasting up to six weeks.
Both sides would continue negotiations during the pause for further releases and a permanent ceasefire, an Egyptian official told the Associated Press.
The break in fighting would cover the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which starts around 10 March this year, and the deal would include an increase in desperately needed aid. It is proposed after heavy international pressure over the high civilian toll and the prospect of even worse bloodshed in Rafah. After initial talks in Paris, follow-up discussions will be held in Doha and Cairo, Egyptian security sources told Reuters.
Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are hungry, some desperately so, and aid agencies describe “pockets of famine” in the territory. Infectious diseases have spread fast and there is little access to medical care, with just 13 of Gaza’s 34 hospitals functioning, whether partly or minimally.
Plans for an assault on Hamas fighters in Rafah, where so many desperate civilians are sheltering, have prompted widespread international calls for Israel to exercise restraint, including from Israel’s most important ally, the US.
But Netanyahu, who has promised “total victory”, said an operation is necessary to root out four battalions of Hamas fighters based there.
“We can’t leave Hamas in place. We can’t leave a quarter of Hamas battalions in Rafah and say, well, that’s fine,” he told CBS in an interview. “If we have a deal, [the operation in Rafah] will be delayed somewhat. But it’ll happen. If we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it anyway. It has to be done.”
About 130 Israelis are being held hostage in Gaza, although around a quarter of them are thought to be dead. More than 100 others were released under a deal in November, in return for a week’s break in fighting and the release of Palestinian prisoners.
After that deal collapsed, Hamas said it would not free any other hostages without a permanent ceasefire and the release of senior militants held prisoner. Netanyahu has said Israel cannot accept those terms, or a Gaza still controlled by Hamas.
Israeli strikes have killed 29,692 Palestinians in Gaza since October, two-thirds of them women and children, and injured 69,879, according to health authorities in the Hamas-run administration.
Thousands more unidentified bodies are trapped under bombed buildings, and intense attacks continue, with at least 86 people killed since Saturday, medics said on Sunday
This toll does not distinguish between civilians and fighters. Israel said it has killed more than 10,000 Hamas militants in Gaza, without providing evidence.
The US president, Joe Biden, has repeatedly warned Israel against moving into Rafah without a “credible” plan to protect civilians. Sullivan said Biden had not been briefed on Israel’s plans for the Rafah assault.
Netanyahu said Israel was working on a plan to move Palestinian civilians into “cleared zones” to the north, although heavy bombing has devastated buildings and infrastructure in these areas, and fighting continues in parts of the north that were among Israel’s first targets.
“We’re trapped, unable to move because of the heavy bombardment,” Ayman Abu Awad, a resident of the Zaytoun neighbourhood of Gaza City, told the Associated Press.
The continuing battles are reminders of the challenge Israeli forces face on the ground as they pursue Netanyahu’s stated aim of “destroying Hamas”, after the cross-border attacks on 7 October that killed about 1,200 people and in which more than 200 were taken hostage.
Despite the high civilian death toll, the only top Hamas leader killed by Israeli forces since then was hit by a drone in Beirut. US officials also believe as much as 80% of the tunnel network Hamas uses for manoeuvres and logistics remains intact, the Wall Street Journal reported last month.
In a sign of mounting pressure on Netanyahu inside Israel, police used water cannon on anti-government protesters calling for a hostage deal in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. Those targeted included families of people held in Gaza, and at least one returned hostage, Ilana Gritzewsky.
Several people were injured, including Moran Michel, whose leg was fractured by a police horse. “This event will bring more people out,” she told Haaretz newspaper, “there are young people who came back after four months in Gaza, and the water cannon does not scare them.”
Organiser Amir Haskel, who was detained, told Haaretz that protesters want an immediate election to replace the government with one more committed to freeing hostages.
