TALKS to reach a Gaza truce resumed Sunday, a Hamas source said, but public disagreement between the movement and Israel intensified over demands to end their seven-month war.
The Hamas delegation had begun meeting with Qatari and Egyptian mediators, the source said.
At around the same time, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced a government decision to shut down operations in his country of Qatar-based news channel Al Jazeera, which has intensely covered the Gaza war. The broadcaster called the decision a “criminal act”.
Netanyahu again rejected Hamas’s demand to end the war and said “surrendering” to this would amount to defeat.
The Qatar-based political chief of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, countered by accusing Netanyahu of sabotaging the talks.
The war’s impact has been increasingly felt around the world as pro-Palestinian university students from Australia to Mexico and Europe follow the example of protest encampments set up in the United States.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,683 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
The latest toll included at least 29 deaths over the previous day, the ministry said.
An AFP correspondent and witnesses on Sunday reported shelling and gunfire in the Gaza City area, helicopter fire in central and southern Gaza, and a missile strike on a house in the Rafah area.
Israel’s military said Sunday air strikes over the past day killed several militants including three in central Gaza who had participated in the October attack.
“We hope and pray to God that the negotiations succeed,” Amani al-Sowerki of Gaza City said in Rafah, southern Gaza, expressing hope that she and others displaced by the war will be able to go home.
The Palestinian civilian toll has strained ties between Israel and its main military supplier and ally the United States.
Nonetheless, Washington’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday that “the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas”.
Negotiators are meeting in Cairo without an Israeli delegation present.