RAFAH, Palestinian Territories — Fresh strikes were reported across the Gaza Strip overnight into Monday as mediators urged Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce and hostage release deal outlined by United States President Joe Biden.
Since Biden spoke about the deal at the White House on Friday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel will pursue the war — now nearing its ninth month — until it has destroyed Hamas and freed the hostages taken during the Palestinian militant group's unprecedented attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
Hamas has said it "views positively" what Biden described as an Israeli proposal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called Israeli War Cabinet member Benny Gantz and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant to discuss the deal, the State Department said in a pair of statements on Sunday night.
In the calls, Blinken "commended" Israel on the proposal and "emphasized that Hamas should take the deal without delay."
Netanyahu, a hawkish political veteran leading a fragile right-wing coalition government, is under intense domestic pressure from two sides.
Protesters backing an immediate hostage release, who rallied again in the western city of Tel Aviv on Saturday, want him to strike a truce deal, but his far-right allies are threatening to bring down the government if he does.
Meanwhile, fighting has continued to rock Gaza, with hospitals there reporting at least 19 killed in overnight strikes into Monday morning.
Gaza's European hospital said 10 people were killed and several were wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house east of the southern Gazan city of Khan Younis. And the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' hospital said six people were reported killed in a strike on a family home further north in the central Bureij refugee camp.
Airstrikes and shelling were also reported in Gaza City, in the territory's north, as well as in Rafah, along its southern border with Egypt.
Political pressure
Netanyahu said on Saturday that "Israel's conditions for ending the war have not changed: the destruction of Hamas' military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel."
Mediators US, Qatar and Egypt later said they called "on both Hamas and Israel to finalize the agreement embodying the principles outlined by President Joe Biden."
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC News on Sunday that "we have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them — an Israeli proposal — that Israel would say yes."
Biden said on Friday that Israel's three-stage offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of Gaza and an initial hostage-prisoner exchange.
Israel and the Palestinians would then negotiate for a lasting ceasefire, with the truce to continue as long as talks are ongoing, Biden said, adding it was "time for this war to end."
Netanyahu took issue with Biden's presentation, insisting that according to the "exact outline proposed by Israel," the transition from one stage to the next was "conditional" and crafted to allow it to maintain its war aims.
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, leaders of the two extreme-right parties in parliament, warned that they would leave the government if it endorsed the truce proposal, potentially costing Netanyahu's coalition its majority.
But opposition leader Yair Lapid, a centrist former premier, said the government "cannot ignore Biden's important speech" and vowed to back Netanyahu if his far-right coalition partners quit.
"I remind Netanyahu that he has our safety net for a hostage deal," Lapid said on X, formerly Twitter.
Gallant, who has criticized Netanyahu over the lack of a postwar plan for Gaza, said on Sunday that Israel was "assessing a governing alternative" to Hamas.
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