The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced plans to send a negotiating team to Qatar for talks on a Gaza ceasefire proposal as Israeli forces continued to bombard the Palestinian enclave, killing at least 78 people in the past 24 hours.
Netanyahu’s office said the team would travel to the Qatari capital, Doha, on Sunday after the Israeli leader instructed negotiators “to accept the invitation for close talks”.
But the statement said that “the changes Hamas is requesting to make to the Qatari proposal were delivered to us last night and are unacceptable to Israel”.
It did not elaborate on what changes were being requested.
The announcement came after Hamas said on Friday that it had provided a “positive” response to a United States-brokered proposal that would involve a 60-day truce in Gaza, renewing hopes of a possible end to Israel’s deadly assault on the Palestinian enclave.
At least 57,338 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s war on Gaza, which began in October 2023, and at least 135,957 others have been wounded. Israeli attacks and a siege have laid waste to Gaza, spurred a dire humanitarian crisis and left the territory on the brink of famine.
An estimated 1,139 people were killed in Israel during the October 7, 2023 attacks, and more than 200 were taken captive. Some 50 captives remain in Gaza, of whom Israel believes 27 are dead.
Hamas has insisted that any ceasefire agreement must include guarantees that Israel will permanently end its war on Gaza.
The Palestinian group said on Friday that it was “fully prepared, with all seriousness, to immediately enter a new round of negotiations on the mechanism for implementing” the latest ceasefire framework.
Hamas’s requests
Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from Amman in Jordan, explained that Hamas has made requests for three core amendments to the proposal.
“They wanted the talks for ending the war to continue if there was a pause in the fighting, if that 60 days was over,” she said.
The Palestinian group also wants humanitarian aid to be delivered to Gaza through United Nations-led international mechanisms instead of the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
More than 700 Palestinians have been killed and thousands wounded while seeking aid at GHF sites since the foundation began operating in the Strip in late May.
“The third [request] was about where Israeli forces could be in the Gaza Strip as part of this deal,” Salhut added.
The announcement from Netanyahu’s office came as families and supporters of Israeli captives rallied in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Haifa, demanding a deal to secure the return of their loved ones. The families have accused Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges, of blocking attempts to reach a deal for his personal gain.
Salhut explained that the captives’ families have accused the Israeli prime minister of “prioritising politics” over the lives of their loved ones.
“His current right-wing allies – the reason why Netanyahu is in power – don’t want a deal,” she said, adding that US President Donald Trump has also been pushing for an agreement between Israel and Hamas.
Trump will host Netanyahu for talks at the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday.
‘Path of surrender’
Earlier on Saturday, Israel’s far-right national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, a key member of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, called on the Israeli prime minister to “abandon the path of surrender”.
In a post on X, Ben-Gvir wrote that any ceasefire deal that would include Israel’s withdrawal from “conquered territories”, the release of Palestinian prisoners, or the “revitalisation of Hamas with humanitarian aid” would constitute a “reward for terrorism”.
“The only way to achieve victory and securely return our hostages is through the complete conquest of the Strip, a total cessation of ‘humanitarian’ aid, and the encouragement to emigration,” he said.
“I call on the prime minister to abandon the path of surrender and return to the path of victory.”
Omer Bartov, an Israeli-American scholar of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University, told Al Jazeera that he believes Netanyahu “does not want to end the war in Gaza”.
If Netanyahu stops fighting, it could lead to the fall of his government, so “what he’s doing now is hedging his bets”, Bartov said.
“What he’s trying to negotiate is something that feels really cynical – both from the point of view of the war that is constantly happening in Gaza, and from the point of view of the families of the hostages,” he said.
He said this is because the ceasefire proposal only provides for the return of 10 Israeli captives held by Hamas, “out of presumably 20 who are still alive”.
“That will make it possible for [Netanyahu] at a certain point to say: ‘Hamas has not met all the conditions and, therefore, we have to resume the fighting’,” said Bartov. “And Hamas will have to accept that.”
‘People are dying just trying to get food’
In Gaza, meanwhile, Israel’s relentless bombardment continued, with soldiers bombing a United Nations-run school and a residential building in Gaza City, killing at least nine people.
Zahwa Salmi, who survived the attack on al-Shafi school in Gaza City, told Al Jazeera the bombing happened early in the morning while displaced families were sleeping.
“At around 2:15am [23:15 GMT], we heard the sound of something devastating explode in the hall,” she recounted.
“People were shouting: ‘There is no god but Allah! Help us, someone!’ But then we no longer heard any sound from them.”
The victims of Israeli attacks also included nine people, including three children, who were shot dead near the GHF aid distribution point in southern Rafah.
Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Gaza City, said survivors of the attack at the GHF site recounted being afraid to pick up the dead because they were afraid of being shot as well.
“The number of Palestinians killed while trying to get food has now crossed 700. This is happening in a place where enforced dehydration and starvation is widespread. People are going hungry. They ration what little they have. Many families are not eating. Mothers are skipping meals to make sure their children have enough,” he said.
“This also reveals another side of the GHF. Whatever they are doing is hardly relief. It’s largely performative – there is nothing genuinely humanitarian about it. They are crowding desperate people into dangerous conditions with zero safety and zero transparency.”
The World Food Programme’s (WFP) deputy executive director, Charles Skau, who made his fourth visit to Gaza since Israel’s war began on Tuesday and Wednesday, said the situation in the enclave is the worst he has ever seen.
“It’s hard to find words to describe the level of desperation I have witnessed. People are dying just trying to get food,” he said in a statement.
Skau reiterated his call for an end to the hostilities.
“A ceasefire is urgently needed,” he wrote. “During the previous ceasefire, we showed what was possible: delivering more than 8,000 trucks of food in only 42 days. We can do it again, but we need all routes and entry points to open, and we need safety in order to be able to reach the most vulnerable.”
