RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — Israel has essentially approved a framework of a proposed ceasefire and hostage release deal for Gaza, and it is now up to Hamas to agree to it, a senior U.S. government official said Saturday, a day before the talks To reach an agreement, efforts in Egypt would have to be resumed.
International mediators have been working for weeks to broker an agreement to halt the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan begins around March 10. An agreement would likely allow aid to reach hundreds of thousands of desperate Palestinians in northern Gaza, who aid agencies fear are suffering from looming starvation.
The Israelis have “more or less accepted” the proposal, which calls for a six-week ceasefire and the release by Hamas of hostages deemed at risk, including the sick, the wounded, the elderly and women, the official said.
“Right now, the ball is in Hamas's court and we continue to push this as hard as we can,” the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under ground rules the White House has set for briefing reporters.
Israeli and Hamas officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A senior Egyptian official said mediators Egypt and Qatar were expected to receive a response from Hamas during talks in Cairo scheduled to begin on Sunday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the conversations.
There is increasing criticism of the hundreds of thousands fighting for survival in northern Gaza. The conflict is bearing the brunt of the conflict that began when the militant group Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing about 250 hostages.
U.S. military planes began the first airdrops of thousands of food items into Gaza, and the forces of Jordan and Egypt said they also carried out airdrops.
The European Union's diplomatic service said many of the dozens of Palestinians killed or injured in chaos over an aid convoy on Thursday were hit by Israeli army fire and called for an international investigation. “The restrictions imposed by the Israeli army and the obstruction of the provision of humanitarian aid by violent extremists are responsible for the crisis.”
Israel's chief military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said Israel organized the humanitarian convoy on Thursday, “and the allegations that we deliberately attacked the convoy and intentionally injured people are unfounded.”
Residents in the northern Gaza Strip say they are sifting through rubble and garbage for food for their children, who barely eat a meal a day. Many families have started mixing animal and bird food with grains to make bread. International aid agency officials say they have faced catastrophic famine.
“We are dying of hunger,” said Soad Abu Hussein, a widow and mother of five who is taking refuge in a school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
According to the World Health Organization, at least 10 children have starved to death in Gaza, according to hospital records.
Gaza's health ministry said the number of Palestinian war deaths rose to 30,320. The ministry does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its figures, but says about two-thirds of those killed were women and children.
In the Gaza Strip's southernmost city of Rafah, where more than half the territory's population now seeks refuge, an Israeli airstrike on Saturday hit tents outside the Emirati hospital, killing 11 people and wounding about 50, including health workers, the health ministry said with.
Israeli Border Police arrest a Palestinian before Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound in the Old City of Jerusalem on Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Israel's air, sea and ground offensive has reduced much of the densely populated northern Gaza Strip to rubble. The military urged Palestinians to move south, but up to 300,000 people are believed to have remained.
About one in six children under two years old in the north suffers from acute malnutrition and wasting, “the worst levels of child malnutrition in the world,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program, said this week. “If nothing changes, there is a risk of famine in the north of the Gaza Strip.”
People overwhelmed trucks delivering food aid and grabbed what they could, Skau said, forcing the WFP to stop deliveries to the north.
Family members and supporters of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza complete the final leg of a four-day march from the Israel-Gaza border to Jerusalem near Jerusalem on Saturday, March 2, 2024, to demand the immediate release of all hostages . The hostages, mostly Israeli citizens, were kidnapped during the brutal Hamas cross-border attack in Israel on October 7 and have been held in the enclave since then during the war. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Thursday's violence saw hundreds of people crowding around 30 trucks carrying a delivery to the north before dawn. Palestinians said nearby Israeli troops fired into the crowd. Israel said it fired warning shots at the crowd and insisted many of the dead had been trampled. Doctors in hospitals in Gaza and a U.N. team that visited a hospital said a large number of the wounded had been shot.
The Health Ministry said two more bodies were recovered from the scene on Saturday, raising the death toll to 118. The number of wounded remains at 760.
Ahmed Abdel Karim, who was being treated for gunshot wounds to his feet, said he spent two days waiting for relief trucks to arrive.
“Everyone attacked these trucks and advanced. I couldn’t get flour because of the large number,” he said. He said he was shot by Israeli troops.
Radwan Abdel-Hai, a father of four young children, heard a rumor late Wednesday that an aid convoy was on the way. He and five others took a donkey cart and found a “sea of people” waiting for them.
Palestinians injured in an Israeli attack while waiting for humanitarian aid on the beach in Gaza City are treated at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Essa)
“Tanks started firing at us,” he said. “As I was running back, I heard tank shells and shots. I heard people screaming. I saw people fall to the ground, some of them motionless.”
Abdel-Hai sought refuge in a nearby building. When the shooting stopped, many dead people lay on the ground, he said. “Many were shot in the back,” he said.
Abu Hussein, the widow, said more than 5,000 people – mostly women and children – who lived with her at the Jabaliya school had not received assistance for more than four weeks. A group of people went to the shore to fish, but three were killed and two wounded by gunfire from Israeli ships, she said.
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Palestinian Muslims pray outside the walls of Jerusalem's Old City after Israeli police denied them entry to the Al-Aqsa Mosque grounds for Friday prayers, Friday, March 1, 2024. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
Mansour Hamed, a 32-year-old former aid worker who lives in a house in Gaza City with more than 50 relatives, said some of them eat tree leaves and animal feed. It has become normal to find a child emerging from the rubble with a rotten piece of bread, he said.
U.S. President Joe Biden acknowledged the extreme need for food and said the U.S. would look for other routes of delivery, “including potentially a maritime corridor.”
Also on Saturday, Israel said three soldiers were killed and 14 wounded on Friday when they accidentally detonated explosives in a booby-trapped building outside Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
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Magdy reported from Cairo. Associated Press writer Tara Copp in Washington contributed to this report.
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