The Palestinian militant group posted on its website on Friday, May 3, that its delegation will travel to Cairo on Saturday to resume Gaza ceasefire talks with a "positive spirit" in the latest effort to halt almost seven months of war with Israel. "We emphasize the positive spirit with which the Hamas leadership dealt with the ceasefire proposal it recently received, and we are going to Cairo in the same spirit to reach an agreement," it added.
"We in Hamas and the Palestinian resistance forces are determined to achieve an agreement that fulfills our people's demands for a complete cessation of the aggression, the withdrawal of the occupation forces, the return of the displaced, relief and reconstruction, and a serious exchange deal," the statement said.
A major stumbling block has been that, while Hamas has demanded a lasting ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to crush its remaining fighters in the far southern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians. The hawkish prime minister has insisted he will send ground troops into Rafah, despite strong concerns voiced by UN agencies and ally Washington for the safety of the 1.2 million civilians inside the city.
A top Hamas official accused Netanyahu on Friday of trying to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to keep fighting the militants. "Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue... and it is clear that he still is," senior Hamas official Hossam Badran declared.
'Broken health system'
World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was "deeply concerned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah... could lead to a bloodbath". "The broken health system would not be able to cope with a surge in casualties and deaths that a Rafah incursion would cause," an agency statement said. Badran charged that Netanyahu's insistence on attacking Rafah was calculated to "thwart any possibility of concluding an agreement" in the negotiations brokered by Egyptian, Qatari, and US mediators.
Israeli air strikes killed several more people in Rafah overnight, Palestinian medics and the civil defense agency said. One bereaved resident, Sanaa Zoorob, said her sister and six of her nieces and nephews were killed. Two of the children "were found in pieces in their mother's embrace", Zoorob said, appealing for "a permanent ceasefire and a full withdrawal from Gaza".
Famine threat remains
Israel's siege has pushed many of Gaza's 2.4 million people to the brink of famine. US pressure has prompted Israel to facilitate more aid deliveries to Gaza, including through the reopened Erez crossing that leads directly into the hardest-hit north. Food availability has improved "a little bit", said the WHO's representative in the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn. But he warned that the threat of famine had "absolutely not" gone away.
Five Israeli human rights groups that took Israel to court over restrictions on aid to Gaza said the state's insistence that it has met its obligations was "incomprehensible". The government had told the Supreme Court that the steps it had taken went "above and beyond" its obligations under international law.
Gisha and four other Israeli non-profit organizations retorted that the shortages evident inside Gaza indicated "the respondents are not meeting their obligations, not to the required extent nor at the necessary speed". The US-based charity World Central Kitchen resumed operations this week, after suspending them in the aftermath of Israeli drone strikes that killed seven of its staff as they unloaded aid in Gaza on April 1. World Central Kitchen was involved in an effort earlier this year to establish a new maritime aid corridor to Gaza from Cyprus to help compensate for dwindling deliveries by land from Israel. The project suffered a new blow Friday when the US military announced high winds had forced troops working to assemble a temporary aid pier off the Gaza coast to relocate to the Israeli port of Ashdod.
Several Arab and Western governments have also airdropped aid into northern Gaza. Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Basal said one person was killed and several injured when they were hit by falling pallets.