Hamas is open to a ceasefire. But Netanyahu says there’s no room for Hamas in postwar Gaza

Hamas and Is­rael staked out their po­si­tions Wednes­day ahead of ex­pect­ed talks on a Wash­ing­ton-backed cease­fire pro­pos­al, with the mil­i­tant group sug­gest­ing it was open to an agree­ment while the Is­raeli prime min­is­ter vowed “there will be no Hamas” in post­war Gaza.

Both stopped short of ac­cept­ing the pro­pos­al an­nounced by U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump on Tues­day. Hamas in­sist­ed on its long­stand­ing po­si­tion that any deal bring an end to the war in Gaza.

Trump said Tues­day that Is­rael had agreed on terms for a 60-day cease­fire in Gaza and urged Hamas to ac­cept the deal be­fore con­di­tions wors­en. The U.S. leader has been in­creas­ing pres­sure on the Is­raeli gov­ern­ment and Hamas to bro­ker a cease­fire, and hostage agree­ment and bring about an end to the war.

Trump said the 60-day pe­ri­od would be used to work to­ward end­ing the war — some­thing Is­rael says it won’t ac­cept un­til Hamas is de­feat­ed. He said that a deal might come to­geth­er as soon as next week.

But Hamas’ re­sponse, which em­pha­sized its de­mand that the war end, raised ques­tions about whether the lat­est of­fer could ma­te­ri­al­ize in­to an ac­tu­al pause in fight­ing.

Hamas of­fi­cial Taher al-Nunu said that the mil­i­tant group was “ready and se­ri­ous re­gard­ing reach­ing an agree­ment.” He said Hamas was “ready to ac­cept any ini­tia­tive that clear­ly leads to the com­plete end to the war.”

A Hamas del­e­ga­tion is ex­pect­ed to meet with Egypt­ian and Qatari me­di­a­tors in Cairo on Wednes­day to dis­cuss the pro­pos­al, ac­cord­ing to an Egypt­ian of­fi­cial. The of­fi­cial spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, be­cause he wasn’t au­tho­rized to dis­cuss the talks with the me­dia.

Dis­agree­ment on how the war should end

Through­out the near­ly 21-month-long war, cease­fire talks be­tween Is­rael and Hamas have re­peat­ed­ly fal­tered over whether the war should end as part of any deal.

Hamas said in a brief state­ment Wednes­day that it had re­ceived a pro­pos­al from the me­di­a­tors and is hold­ing talks with them to “bridge gaps” to re­turn to the ne­go­ti­at­ing ta­ble to try to reach a cease­fire agree­ment.

Hamas has said that it’s will­ing to free the re­main­ing 50 hostages, less than half of whom are said to be alive, in ex­change for a com­plete Is­raeli with­draw­al from Gaza and an end to the war.

Is­rael says it will on­ly agree to end the war if Hamas sur­ren­ders, dis­arms and ex­iles it­self, some­thing the group re­fus­es to do.

“I am an­nounc­ing to you — there will be no Hamas,” Is­raeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Ne­tanyahu said dur­ing a speech Wednes­day.

An Is­raeli of­fi­cial said that the lat­est pro­pos­al calls for a 60-day deal that would in­clude a par­tial Is­raeli with­draw­al from Gaza and a surge in hu­man­i­tar­i­an aid to the ter­ri­to­ry. The me­di­a­tors and the U.S. would pro­vide as­sur­ances about talks to end the war, but Is­rael isn’t com­mit­ting to that as part of the lat­est pro­pos­al, the of­fi­cial said.

The of­fi­cial wasn’t au­tho­rized to dis­cuss the de­tails of the pro­posed deal with the me­dia and spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty.

It wasn’t clear how many hostages would be freed as part of the agree­ment, but pre­vi­ous pro­pos­als have called for the re­lease of about 10.

Some 50 hostages re­main, many of them thought to be dead.

“I’m hold­ing my hands and pray­ing that this will come about,” said Id­it Ohel, moth­er of Is­raeli hostage Alon Ohel. “I hope the world will help this hap­pen, will put pres­sure on who­ev­er they need to, so the war will stop and the hostages will re­turn.”

On Mon­day, Trump is set to host Ne­tanyahu at the White House, days af­ter Ron Der­mer, a se­nior Ne­tanyahu ad­vis­er, held dis­cus­sions with top U.S. of­fi­cials about Gaza, Iran and oth­er mat­ters.

Trump is­sues an­oth­er warn­ing

On Tues­day, Trump wrote on so­cial me­dia that Is­rael had “agreed to the nec­es­sary con­di­tions to fi­nal­ize the 60 Day CEASE­FIRE, dur­ing which time we will work with all par­ties to end the War.”

“I hope, for the good of the Mid­dle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, be­cause it will not get bet­ter — IT WILL ON­LY GET WORSE,” he said.

Trump’s warn­ing may find a skep­ti­cal au­di­ence with Hamas. Even be­fore the ex­pi­ra­tion of the war’s longest cease­fire in March, Trump has re­peat­ed­ly is­sued dra­mat­ic ul­ti­ma­tums to pres­sure Hamas to agree to longer paus­es in the fight­ing that would see the re­lease of more hostages and a re­turn of more aid for Gaza’s civil­ians.

Still, Trump views the cur­rent mo­ment as a po­ten­tial turn­ing point in the bru­tal con­flict that has left more than 57,000 dead in the Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry.

Gaza’s Health Min­istry said the death toll passed the 57,000 mark Tues­day in­to Wednes­day, af­ter hos­pi­tals re­ceived 142 bod­ies overnight. The min­istry doesn’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants in its death count, but says that more than half of the dead are women and chil­dren.

Since dawn Wednes­day, Is­raeli strikes killed a to­tal of 40 peo­ple across the Gaza Strip, the min­istry said. Hos­pi­tal of­fi­cials said four chil­dren and sev­en women were among the dead.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary, which blames Hamas for the civil­ian ca­su­al­ties be­cause it op­er­ates from pop­u­lat­ed ar­eas, was look­ing in­to the re­ports.

The war be­gan on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led mil­i­tants at­tacked south­ern Is­rael, killing 1,200 peo­ple and tak­ing rough­ly 250 hostages.

The war has left the coastal Pales­tin­ian ter­ri­to­ry in ru­ins, with much of the ur­ban land­scape flat­tened in the fight­ing. More than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion pop­u­la­tion has been dis­placed, of­ten mul­ti­ple times. And the war has sparked a hu­man­i­tar­i­an cri­sis in Gaza, push­ing hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple to­ward hunger.

Hos­pi­tal di­rec­tor killed

The di­rec­tor of the In­done­sian Hos­pi­tal, Dr. Mar­wan Sul­tan, was killed in an apart­ment in an Is­raeli strike west of Gaza City, a hos­pi­tal state­ment said. The hos­pi­tal is the Pales­tin­ian en­clave’s largest med­ical fa­cil­i­ty north of Gaza City and has been a crit­i­cal life­line since the start of the Is­rael-Hamas war.

The hos­pi­tal was sur­round­ed by Is­raeli troops last month, and evac­u­at­ed along­side the oth­er two pri­ma­ry hos­pi­tals in north­ern Gaza.

The bod­ies of Sul­tan, his wife, daugh­ter and son-in-law, ar­rived at Shi­fa Hos­pi­tal torn in­to pieces, ac­cord­ing to Is­sam Nab­han, head of the nurs­ing de­part­ment at the In­done­sian Hos­pi­tal.

“Gaza lost a great man and doc­tor,” Nab­han said. “He nev­er left the hos­pi­tal one mo­ment since the war be­gan and urged us to stay and pro­vide hu­man­i­tar­i­an as­sis­tance. We don’t know what he did to de­serve get­ting killed.” —CAIRO (AP)

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Sto­ry by FAT­MA KHALED, SAMY MAGDY and BASSEM MROUE | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Bassem Mroue re­port­ed from Beirut. Moshe Edri in Tel Aviv, Is­rael; Ka­reem Chehayeb in Beirut; and Josef Fe­d­er­man in Jerusalem, con­tributed to this re­port.