LAST UPDATE | 6 hrs ago

ISRAEL SIGNALLED TODAY  that it was open to striking a deal with Hamas that included “ending the fighting” in Gaza, where rescuers reported dozens killed a day after Israel stepped up its offensive.

Israel’s military has said the expansion of its campaign is aimed at “achieving all the war’s objectives” including releasing hostages and “the defeat of Hamas”.

But as the intensified operations got underway, Israel and Hamas were entering indirect talks in Qatar that the Palestinian group said were aimed at ending the war.

In a statement on Sunday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said that “even at this very moment, the negotiation team in Doha is working to exhaust every possibility for a deal – whether according to the Witkoff framework or as part of ending the fighting,” referring to US Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff who has been involved in previous discussions.

Such a deal, according to Netanyahu’s statement, “would include the release of all the hostages, the exile of Hamas terrorists, and the disarmament of the Gaza Strip”.

Ever since a two-month ceasefire fell apart in March as Israel resumed its offensive, negotiations mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States have failed to reach a breakthrough.

Netanyahu has opposed ending the war without Hamas’s total defeat, while Hamas has balked at the prospect of handing over its weapons.

Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu said on Saturday that the talks in Doha had kicked off “without any preconditions from either side”.

A Hamas source familiar with the negotiations said that “positions are being exchanged by both sides in an attempt at bridging perspectives”, adding the group was approaching the talks with “great flexibility”.

In Gaza

Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli air strikes today killed at least 50 people, including children, a day after Israel announced an expanded military campaign.

“According to preliminary figures, at least 50 people have been martyred in the Gaza Strip as a result of ongoing Israeli air strikes since the early hours,” agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal told news agency AFP.

Earlier, Bassal had said that at least 100 others were wounded in a predawn attack on tents sheltering displaced Palestinians in Al-Mawasi, in the southern Gaza Strip.

Seven people were killed in a strike on a house in northern Gaza’s Jabalia, Bassal said, while the Al-Awda hospital in the same area reported damage.

Deaths were also recorded in the central area of Al-Zawayda and in Khan Yunis, in the south, according to Bassal.

The Israeli military announced yesterday it was intensifying its operations across Gaza in a bid to defeat Hamas militants after more than 19 months of war.

The stepped-up campaign comes amid growing international concern over worsening humanitarian conditions in the Palestinian territory due to an Israeli aid blockade.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military today said it had intercepted a missile fired from Yemen, where the Iran-backed Houthi rebels claimed launching two missiles at Israel’s main airport.

“A missile that was launched from Yemen was intercepted”, the Israeli military said in a statement, adding that air raid sirens had sounded in several areas of the country.

The Houthis later said they had fired “two ballistic missiles” towards Israel’s Ben Gurion airport, near Tel Aviv.

The Iran-backed rebels have regularly fired missiles and drones at Israel since the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023, following an attack on Israel by the Houthis’ Palestinian ally Hamas.

Earlier this month, a Houthi missile struck the area of the Tel Aviv airport, gouging a hole near its main terminal building and wounding several people in a rare penetration of Israeli air defences.

On Friday, Israel bombed the Houthi-held Red Sea ports of Hodeida and Salif following three missile attacks in as many days. It threatened to target the Houthi leadership if the attacks continued.

In response to the strike that landed near Ben Gurion, Israel has struck the airport in Yemen’s rebel-controlled capital Sanaa and three nearby power stations.

Today, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the group would continue targeting Israel until the “siege is lifted” on Gaza.

The Houthis, who control swathes of Yemen, have also targeted Red Sea shipping throughout the Gaza war, saying they act in solidarity with Palestinians.

Their attacks on the vital shipping route drew retaliatory strikes by the United States, which in early May sealed a ceasefire with the rebel group that did not include Israel.

- © AFP 2025