The Palestinian resistance group Hamas has urged Gaza mediators to implement U.S. President Joe Biden’s truce plan without further negotiations.
The call on Sunday came after one of the deadliest Israeli strikes on the besieged Gaza Strip in more than 10 months of its genocidal war killed nearly 100 people and more Palestinians fled southern Gaza’s Khan Younis after a new Israeli military operation.
International mediators had invited Israel and Hamas to resume talks toward a long-sought truce and hostage-release deal after the fighting in Gaza and the killings of Iran-aligned Hamas and Hezbollah leaders sparked fears of a wider conflict.
Israel, whose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been accused of prolonging the war for political gain, has accepted the invitation from the United States, Qatar and Egypt for a round of talks planned for Thursday.
Hamas said Sunday it wanted the implementation of a truce plan laid out by Biden on May 31 and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, “rather than going through more negotiation rounds or new proposals.”
Hamas “demands that the mediators present a plan to implement what they proposed to the movement … based on Biden’s vision and the U.N. Security Council resolution, and compel the (Israeli) occupation to comply”, it said.
Unveiling the plan, Biden had called it a three-phase “roadmap to an enduring cease-fire and the release of all hostages,” and said it was an Israeli proposal. Mediation efforts since then have failed to produce an agreement.
Hamas on Tuesday named its Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar to succeed slain political leader and truce negotiator Ismail Haniyeh, killed July 31 in Tehran in an attack carried out by Israel.
Haniyeh’s killing, just hours after Israel assassinated the military chief of Lebanese Hamas ally Hezbollah in a strike on Beirut, spurred intense diplomacy to avert a wider war in the Middle East.
In Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s main city already ravaged by months of bombardment and battles, journalists said hundreds of Palestinians had fled northern neighborhoods after Israel issued fresh evacuation orders.
The military dropped leaflets and sent mobile phone messages warning of “dangerous combat” in al-Jalaa district and telling Palestinian residents to leave the area, which until Sunday had been designated a humanitarian safe zone.
Similar evacuation orders have preceded major military incursions, often forcing Palestinians displaced numerous times by the war to pack up and leave.
3-phase plan
The military said in a statement its forces were “about to operate against the … organizations in the area.”
It came a day after civil defense rescuers in the Hamas-run territory said an Israeli airstrike killed 93 people at a school housing displaced Palestinians, sparking international condemnation.
Israel claimed it targeted Hamas members operating out of Gaza City’s al-Tabieen school and mosque with “precise munitions,” declaring that “at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad … were eliminated.”
Mahmud Bassal, spokesperson for the civil defense agency, said Sunday that identifying the victims could take at least two days as “we have many bodies torn into pieces” and “shredded or burnt by the bombs.”
Hamas in its Sunday statement cited the Israeli “massacre against the displaced at al-Tabieen school” and “our responsibilities towards our people and their interests” as the reasons for its announcement.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’ Oct. 7 incursion into southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of 1,198 people, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Resistance groups also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the military says are dead.
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has killed nearly 40,000 people, mostly women and children, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
Biden said the first phase of the proposed roadmap includes a “full and complete cease-fire” lasting six weeks, with Israeli forces withdrawing from “all populated areas of Gaza” and some hostages freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The second phase would see the remaining living hostages released as the warring sides negotiate “a permanent end to hostilities,” followed by “a major reconstruction plan for Gaza” and the return of dead hostages’ remains.
‘Have to go somewhere’
Hamas officials, some analysts and critics in Israel have said Netanyahu has sought to prolong the fighting for political gain.
Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and other regional allies have vowed retaliation for Haniyeh’s killing and that of Hezbollah’s military chief Fuad Shukr.
Biden, asked what his message was to Iran, responded: “Don’t.”
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered an aircraft carrier group to hasten its arrival in the Middle East, the Pentagon said Sunday.
Austin also ordered the USS Georgia guided missile submarine to the area, a Pentagon spokesman said.
The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said that “just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza”, where Khan Younis is located.
The entire Gaza Strip has a population of about 2.4 million people.
Umm Sami Shahada, a 55-year-old displaced Palestinian, said she had “fled Gaza City at the start of the war for Khan Younis,” hoping to find shelter.
“My daughter was killed in the bombardment, so we went to Rafah, then we came back here, and now with this new evacuation order we don’t know where to go,” she said.
Families gathered their meager belongings as crowds of people left al-Jalaa, some loading mattresses, clothing and cooking utensils into pick-up trucks. Others took to the road on foot or left on donkey-drawn carts.
Majd Ayyad, displaced from Gaza City, said: “We have to go somewhere, and we don’t know if it will be good or bad.”
