Cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas broke down again, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accusing the Islamist group of making “extreme demands.”
“Hamas once again rejected an American compromise proposal,” Netanyahu’s office said on Tuesday. He cited the organization’s insistence on an immediate end to the war in Gaza, the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territory and “leaving in place its administration so that it can repeat, time and again, the massacre of October 7.”
The two sides were negotiating in Qatar, a key mediator and home to some Hamas political leaders.
Netanyahu’s statement came after weeks of talks that appeared to make little headway. Israel says a cease-fire can only be temporary — around six weeks — and the war must continue until Hamas’s remaining fighting units are taken apart.
Israel has said its next major move will be to send forces into Rafah. Most of its allies, including the U.S., are deeply concerned about an offensive because the city in southern Gaza contains more than one million people seeking shelter from the war.
The Israeli government argues an assault is necessary because it’s the last bastion of Hamas and where several thousand of its troops, main military leaders and some 100 Israeli hostages are located.
“We intend to fight this fight to the very end,” Ron Dermer, Israel’s strategic affairs minister and one of Netanyahu’s closest allies, said to Bloomberg TV on Tuesday. “If the position of the United States is that there shouldn’t be a major military operation in Rafah, then we won’t be on the same page. We have to go into Rafah and finish the job.”
Israel also says Hamas, designated a terrorist group by the U.S. and European Union, must agree to release hostages for a truce to start. Hamas abducted around 250 people and killed 1,200 when its fighters swarmed southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7.
Roughly 100 hostages were freed during the only pause in the conflict so far, which ended in early December. It’s unclear how many of the others are alive.
Israel’s retaliatory attack on Gaza has killed more than 32,000 people, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there, which doesn’t distinguish between fighters and civilians.
Netanyahu’s under increasing pressure to stop fighting and allow more aid into the Palestinian enclave to alleviate a humanitarian crisis. The United Nations has warned of a famine in parts of Gaza.
Relations between the U.S. and Israel reached a new low on Monday when the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire. Netanyahu said the U.S. — the only one of the 15 members to abstain — should have used its veto. In response, he canceled an Israeli delegation’s trip to Washington that was to discuss the plans for Rafah. It was going to be led by Dermer and Israel’s national security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi.
The U.N. resolution did not say a cease-fire should be dependent on the release of hostages, something Israel has consistently demanded.
Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, who’s based in Qatar, traveled to Tehran on Tuesday. In a press conference with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, he said the U.N. vote showed Israel had “no more support in the world.”
Dermer cited Hamas’s praise for the resolution as proof that it shouldn’t have been approved.
(With assistance from Annmarie Hordern, Lisa Abramowicz and Jonathan Ferro.)
