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26-06-2025
GAZA STRIP: A senior Hamas official has told media that mediators have intensified their efforts to broker a new ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but that negotiations with Israel remain stalled.
The comments came as US President Donald Trump said “great progress” was being made since Israel and Iran ended their 12-day war on Tuesday and that his envoy Steve Witkoff thought an agreement between Israel and Hamas was “very close”.
Israeli attacks across Gaza on Wednesday killed at least 45 Palestinians including some who were seeking aid, the Hamas-run health ministry said.
Meanwhile, the Israeli military announced that seven soldiers were killed in a bomb attack on Tuesday claimed by Hamas.
“I think great progress is being made on Gaza, I think because of this attack that we made,” President Trump told reporters in Brussels on Wednesday, referring to the US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities carried out at the weekend amid the conflict between Israel and Iran.
“I think we’re going to have some very good news. I was talking to Steve Witkoff… (and) he did tell me that Gaza’s very close,” he added.
Shortly after Trump spoke, the senior Hamas official told media that mediators were “engaged in intensive contacts aimed at reaching a ceasefire agreement”.
However, he added that the group had “not received any new proposal so far”.
An Israeli official also told the Haaretz newspaper that there has been no progress in the negotiations, and that major disagreements remained unresolved.
Efforts by the US, Qatar and Egypt to broker a deal stalled at the end of May, when Witkoff said Hamas had sought “totally unacceptable” amendments to a US proposal backed by Israel for a 60-day truce, during which half the living Israeli hostages and half of those who have died would be released.
Israel resumed its military offensive in Gaza on 18 March, collapsing a two-month ceasefire. It said it wanted to put pressure on Hamas to release its hostages. Fifty are still in Gaza, at least 20 of whom are believed to be alive.
Israel also imposed a total blockade on humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza at the start of March, which it partially eased after 11 weeks following pressure from US allies and warnings from global experts that half a million people were facing starvation.
At the same time, Israel and the US backed the establishment of a new aid distribution mechanism run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is intended to bypass the UN as the main supplier of aid to Palestinians. They said the GHF’s system would prevent aid being stolen by Hamas, which the group denies doing.
The GHF, which uses US private security contractors, says it has distributed food packages containing more than 44 million meals since it began operating on 26 May, with more than 2.4 million handed out at three sites on Wednesday.
However, the UN and other aid groups have refused to co-operate with the GHF, accusing it of co-operating with Israel’s goals in a way that violates fundamental humanitarian principles.
They have also expressed alarm at the near-daily reports of Palestinians being killed near the group’s sites, which are inside Israeli military zones.
According to Gaza’s health ministry, at least 549 people have been killed and 4,000 injured while trying to collect aid since the GHF began distributing aid on 26 May.
On Wednesday morning, a spokesman for the Hamas-run Civil Defence agency said six people were killed when Israeli forces opened fire at crowds waiting near one of the GHF’s food distribution centre in central Gaza. (Int’l News Desk)
