Hamas on Tuesday renewed its insistence on a permanent cease-fire, which Israel says it cannot yet accept.
Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has escalated in recent weeks, even as talks to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas have picked up pace.
Hezbollah has said its attacks are in support of the Palestinians and that it won’t stop until Israel ceases its war in Gaza.
Hamas on Tuesday responded to the U.S.-promoted plan, stressing again that a halt in fighting must include a timeline for a permanent cease-fire.
As part of a cease-fire deal to release those hostages, Hamas has also demanded the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Hezbollah fired a barrage of rockets at Israel on Wednesday after a suspected Israeli strike in southern Lebanon killed one of the militant group’s senior commanders, an escalation of violence that threatens to expand the war in the Gaza Strip to Israel’s border with Lebanon.
The exchange of fire comes as a prospective cease-fire deal in Gaza that could also end the hostilities between the Lebanese militia and Israel appears to be at an impasse. Hamas on Tuesday renewed its insistence on a permanent cease-fire, which Israel says it cannot yet accept.
The Hezbollah commander, Taleb Sami Abdallah, is among the highest-ranking fighters in Lebanon killed since Hamas sparked a war with Israel, pulling Hezbollah into a lower-intensity conflict with the Israeli military that has seen rockets and drones fired into Israel and 60,000 Israelis displaced from their homes.
The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on the death of the commander, but said roughly 160 projectiles were fired from Lebanon at towns in northern Israel, causing fires but no initial casualties.
Fighting between Hezbollah and Israel has escalated in recent weeks, even as talks to end the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas have picked up pace.
Hezbollah has said its attacks are in support of the Palestinians and that it won’t stop until Israel ceases its war in Gaza. Israel, reluctant to open a second front, has been trying to calibrate its actions to avoid sparking a full-scale war.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is in the Middle East this week, pushing a ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza that has been met with intransigence by both Israel and Hamas.
The U.S. has made a full-court press to bring the two sides together, but Israel and Hamas remain too far apart on the biggest issue of how and when a permanent end to fighting should come.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said he is pushing for a cease-fire that frees hostages held in Gaza but wants the option of returning to fighting in the future.
Hamas on Tuesday responded to the U.S.-promoted plan, stressing again that a halt in fighting must include a timeline for a permanent cease-fire. U.S. officials in Jordan received the Hamas’ response on Tuesday night from Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief, who was in Amman to attend a conference on humanitarian assistance to Gaza, a senior State Department official said. Blinken was also at the conference.
The U.S.-designated terrorist group also hardened its position on elements of a deal, demanding that Israel initially withdraw from the corridor of land between Gaza, Egypt and the Rafah crossing into the Egyptian Sinai, according to Arab mediators who received the Hamas response. Israel has said Hamas uses the corridor to smuggle weapons and other goods into the strip.
The White House said it was evaluating Hamas’s response. Qatar said it would continue mediation efforts with the U.S. and Egypt.
Tensions have heightened between Israel and Hamas since Saturday, when two Israeli commando teams rescued four hostages held in central Gaza in an operation that also caused scores of Palestinian casualties.
Palestinian health authorities said 274 Gazans were killed and almost 700 injured from airstrikes, shelling and gunfire. The Israeli military said most of the dead were militants.
Israel says that more than 100 people who were taken on the Oct. 7 attacks that sparked the war in Gaza remain captive, including dozens who were killed that day and taken to Gaza or subsequently died in the enclave.
As part of a cease-fire deal to release those hostages, Hamas has also demanded the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails. One of its new demands Tuesday was that Israel should not be allowed to veto any names of prisoners proposed by Hamas to be released, according to Arab mediators who received the Hamas response.
Hamas said that would include Marwan Barghouti, a Palestinian politician who was jailed for his involvement in the deaths of Israelis in the early 2000s and is often talked about as a potential leader of the Palestinian national cause.
More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the start of the war, most of them civilians, according to Palestinian health authorities. The figure doesn’t specify how many were combatants. Hamas-led militants on Oct. 7 killed some 1,200 people in Israel, also mainly civilians, according to Israeli authorities.
A United Nations commission investigating the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the conflict in Gaza in a report issued Wednesday accused both Israel and Hamas of committing war crimes. Hamas and Israel didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.
President Biden last month outlined a three-phase cease-fire plan that has become the basis for recent talks about a halt to fighting. The Biden proposal would begin with a complete cease-fire over six weeks, a withdrawal of Israeli forces from populated areas of Gaza and the release of some hostages held by Hamas. The second phase would see a permanent end to the hostilities, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of remaining hostages. Phase three would involve a plan for the reconstruction of Gaza.
Lina Fawwaz, 37, mother of two living in Gaza City, said she is very frustrated by this long process of negotiations that appear to be leading nowhere.
“I don’t care about prisoners, or about lifting the siege, I just want this bloodshed to stop, because our lives were destroyed already."
Write to Rory Jones at [email protected]
