Trump gave Hamas \u201cthree or four days\u201d to accept his plan<\/a>, which has been welcomed by world powers, including Arab and Muslim nations.<\/p>\nMohammad Nazzal, a member of Hamas\u2019s political bureau, said in a statement Friday that the \u201cplan has points of concern, and we will announce our position on it soon\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Places of death\u2019<\/p>\n
On the ground on Friday, Gaza\u2019s civil defence agency \u2013 a rescue force operating under Hamas authority \u2013 reported heavy air bombardment and artillery shelling on Gaza City.<\/p>\n
It said Israeli strikes killed at least 11 people across the territory, including eight in Gaza City.<\/p>\n
AFP has contacted the Israeli military for comment.<\/p>\n
Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing swathes of the territory mean AFP cannot independently verify details or casualty figures provided by the Israeli military or the civil defence.<\/p>\n
The Israeli military is waging an air and ground offensive on the territory\u2019s largest urban centre, from which hundreds of thousands have been forced to flee.<\/p>\n
The UN on Friday reiterated there was no safe place in Gaza and that Israel-designated zones in the south were \u201cplaces of death\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe notion of a safe zone in the south is farcical,\u201d Unicef spokesman James Elder said from the Gaza Strip.<\/p>\n
Amnesty International condemned a \u201ccatastrophic wave of mass displacement\u201d as Israel intensified its Gaza City offensive.<\/p>\n
The rights group said hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom had already been displaced multiple times, were being forced into \u201covercrowded enclaves in the south… that lack access to clean water, food, medical care, shelter and life-sustaining infrastructure\u201d.<\/p>\n
As the war nears the two-year mark and the death toll continues to rise, protesters around the world have railed at Israel\u2019s interception of a flotilla carrying pro-Palestinian activists and aid for Gaza.<\/p>\n
On Friday, the organisers of the Global Sumud Flotilla said its last remaining boat had been intercepted and Israel\u2019s foreign ministry said it had deported four Italian participants.<\/p>\n
\u2018Two opinions\u2019 in Hamas<\/p>\n
As Hamas mulled Trump\u2019s peace plan this week, a Palestinian source close to the group\u2019s leadership told AFP on Wednesday that the Islamist movement wanted to amend some clauses, including the one on disarmament.<\/p>\n
Hamas leaders also want \u201cinternational guarantees\u201d for a full Israeli withdrawal and that no assassination attempts would be made inside or outside Gaza, the source added.<\/p>\n
Another source familiar with the negotiations told AFP that the group was split over Trump\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n
Structurally, the group\u2019s leadership is divided between officials based in the Gaza Strip and those abroad, particularly in Qatar.<\/p>\n
Much of Hamas\u2019 leadership has also been wiped out in Israeli attacks throughout the war.<\/p>\n
The source told AFP that \u201cthe first (opinion) supports unconditional approval, as the priority is a ceasefire under Trump\u2019s guarantees, with mediators ensuring Israel implements the plan\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe second has serious reservations regarding key clauses… They favour conditional approval with clarifications reflecting Hamas\u2019s and the resistance factions\u2019 demands,\u201d the source added.<\/p>\n
Hugh Lovatt, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said \u201cultimately it\u2019s not just about convincing Hamas leadership in Doha, but also the leadership in Gaza, as well as Hamas members and fighters in Gaza\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cAdditionally, Hamas must then be able to convince other factions in Gaza,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
The war was triggered by Hamas\u2019s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.<\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 66,288 Palestinians, according to health ministry figures in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.<\/p>\n
Their data does not distinguish between civilians and combatants, but indicates that more than half of the dead are women and children.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHamas is still continuing consultations regarding Trump\u2019s plan… and has informed mediators that the consultations are ongoing and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":58767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48759,48761,1971,30687,48763,5263,3595,45688,3468,2178,3052,16945,19724,209,9747,42,11676,48762,9878,43,48760,21485,2892,2170,2572,10809,39545,61,6859,40,38,41,39,2179,48758,698,1455],"class_list":["post-58766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-11am","tag-20point","tag-1971","tag-accept","tag-agree","tag-all","tag-by","tag-deadline","tag-deal","tag-donald","tag-faced","tag-gaza","tag-given","tag-group","tag-hamas","tag-headlines","tag-hell","tag-militant","tag-monday","tag-news","tag-nzt","tag-palestinian","tag-peace","tag-plan","tag-president","tag-sunday","tag-terms","tag-to","tag-told","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-trump","tag-ultimatum","tag-until","tag-warning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/58767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}