Hamas says it will no longer make concessions to Israel to achieve ceasefire in Gaza

Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Wednesday it was not willing to make any more concessions to Israel in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza, despite talks continuing in Cairo seeking a pause in Israel’s seven-month offensive.

The Israelis continued their tank and air attacks on the city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, on Wednesday and threatened a major offensive. Israeli forces advanced through the Rafah crossing on the border with Egypt on Tuesday, cutting off a vital humanitarian aid route and the only way to evacuate injured patients.

Izzat El-Reshiq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau in Qatar, said in a statement late on Wednesday that the group would not go beyond a ceasefire proposal already accepted on Monday, which would also involve the release of some Israeli hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian women and children detained in Israel.

“Israel is not serious about reaching an agreement and is using the negotiations as cover to invade Rafah and occupy the crossing,” Reshiq said.

There were no comments at first from Israel, which, on Monday, considered the three-phase proposal approved by Hamas unacceptable because the terms had been diluted.

Delegations from Hamas, Israel, the USA, Egypt and Qatar have been meeting in Cairo since Tuesday. Citing a senior source, Egypt’s state-affiliated Al Qahera television station said talks in Cairo continued throughout Wednesday and into the night.

The US said on Tuesday that Hamas had revised its ceasefire proposal and that such a review could overcome an impasse in negotiations.

Just hours before this latest Hamas statement, Washington continued to say that the two sides are not far apart.

“We believe there is a path to an agreement,” US national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters.

The US wants to avoid a full Israeli invasion of Rafah, and a senior US official said on condition of anonymity that Washington has halted the deployment of 1,800 2,000-pound bombs and 1,700 500-pound bombs out of concerns for civilians in Rafah.

US President Joe Biden said on Wednesday that Israel had used these bombs to kill Palestinian civilians.

“Civilians have been killed in Gaza as a result of these bombs and other ways in which they attack population centers,” he told CNN.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan, called Washington’s decision “very disappointing”, although he does not believe that the US will stop supplying weapons to Israel.

Israel claims it needs to attack Rafah to defeat thousands of Hamas fighters who, according to the Israelis, are hiding there. But the city is also a refuge for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have fled fighting further north in Gaza.

On Wednesday, Hamas said its fighters were fighting Israeli forces east of Rafah, and that Islamic Jihad fighters attacked Israeli soldiers and military vehicles with heavy artillery near the city’s long-abandoned airport.

Israeli tank shells fell in the middle of Rafah, injuring at least 25 people on Wednesday, according to doctors. Residents said an Israeli airstrike killed four people and injured 16 others in western Rafah.

The Israeli Army reported that its troops had discovered Hamas infrastructure in several locations in eastern Rafah and that it was carrying out targeted attacks on the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing, as well as airstrikes throughout the Gaza Strip.

The UN, Gazans and humanitarian groups have warned that further Israeli invasions of Rafah will trigger 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 the enclave, where more than half the population suffers from catastrophic famine.

Palestinians huddled in tent camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water and medicine. The main maternity hospital in Rafah, where almost half of Gaza’s births take place, has stopped admitting patients, the United Nations Population Fund told Reuters on Wednesday.

“The city’s streets echo with the screams of innocent lives lost, families torn apart and homes reduced to rubble,” said Rafah Mayor Ahmed Al-Sofi, appealing for the international community to intervene.

Israel told civilians in Rafah, many of whom had already been displaced several times, to evacuate to an “expanded humanitarian zone” in al-Mawasi, about 20 km away.

Estimates of how many Palestinians have left Rafah since Monday range from 10,000, according to the UN agency UNRWA, to tens of thousands, according to the media office of the Hamas-run Gaza government.

“Some streets look like a ghost town now,” Aref, 35, told Reuters via a chat app.

Israel’s offensive has killed 34,844 Palestinians in seven months of war, most of them civilians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on October 7, killing about 1,200 people and kidnapping more than 200 people, according to the most recent Israeli figures.