Hamas announces that it has accepted an Egyptian-Qatari ceasefire proposal

CAIRO (AP) — The Hamas militant group says it has accepted a ceasefire proposal between Egypt and Qatar aimed at ending the seven-month war with Israel.

He issued a statement Monday saying his supreme leader, Ismail Haniyeh, announced the news in a phone call with Qatar’s prime minister and Egypt’s intelligence minister.

The two Middle Eastern countries have served as mediators for months in talks between Israel and Hamas.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

THIS IS A LATEST UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

JERUSALEM (AP) — The Israeli military on Monday ordered about 100,000 Palestinians to begin evacuating the town of Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, signaling that a long-promised ground invasion there could be imminent and complicate further efforts to negotiate a ceasefire.

Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, have repeatedly said Israel should not attack Rafah. The impending operation has sparked worldwide concern over the fate of around 1.4 million Palestinians who have taken refuge there.

Aid agencies have warned that an offensive would deepen the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and lead to a wave of additional civilian deaths in an Israeli campaign that in nearly seven months has killed 34,000 people and devastated the territory.

US President Joe Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday and reiterated US concerns about an invasion of Rafah. Biden said a ceasefire with Hamas was the best way to protect the lives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza, a National Security Council spokesperson said on condition of anonymity to discuss the call before the release of an official statement from the White House.

Hamas and key mediator Qatar said the Rafah invasion would derail efforts by international mediators to broker a ceasefire. Days earlier, Hamas had discussed a U.S.-backed proposal that would have raised the possibility of an end to the war and a withdrawal of Israeli troops in exchange for the release of all hostages held by Hamas. the group. Israeli officials rejected the compromise, vowing to continue their campaign until Hamas is destroyed.

Netanyahu said Monday that the capture of Rafah, which Israel says is the last significant Hamas stronghold in Gaza, was vital to ensure that the militants could not rebuild their military capabilities and repeat the Oct. 7 attack on Israel that started the war.

Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, an army spokesman, said about 100,000 people had been ordered to move from parts of Rafah to a nearby humanitarian zone declared by Israel called Muwasi, a camp fortune on the coast. He said Israel had expanded the size of the zone and included tents, food, water and field hospitals.

However, it was not immediately clear whether this equipment was already in place to welcome the new arrivals.

Around 450,000 displaced Palestinians are already finding refuge in Muwasi. The United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, said it was providing aid. But conditions are squalid, with few bathrooms or sanitation facilities in this largely rural area, forcing families to dig private latrines.

After the evacuation order was announced Monday, Palestinians in Rafah had to once again uproot their extended families to an unknown fate, exhausted after months of living in sprawling tent camps or crowded into schools or other shelters in and around the city. Few who spoke to The Associated Press were willing to risk staying.

Mohammed Jindiyah said that early in the war he tried to hold out in his home in northern Gaza after Israel ordered an evacuation in October. He ended up coming under heavy bombardment before fleeing to Rafah.

He complies with the order this time, but is no longer sure whether to move to Muwasi or another town in central Gaza.

“We are 12 families and we don’t know where to go. There is no safe area in Gaza,” he said.

Sahar Abu Nahel, who fled to Rafah with 20 family members, including her children and grandchildren, wiped tears from her cheeks in despair at the new move.

“I don’t have any money or anything. I’m really tired, and so are the kids,” she said. “Perhaps it is more honorable for us to die. We are humiliated.

Israeli military leaflets were dropped with maps detailing a number of eastern Rafah neighborhoods to be evacuated, warning that an attack was imminent and that anyone remaining was “putting themselves and their family members in danger.” “. Text messages and radio broadcasts repeated the message.

UNRWA will not evacuate Rafah so it can continue providing aid to those remaining there, said Scott Anderson, the agency’s director in Gaza.

“We will provide help to people wherever they choose to be,” he told the AP.

The UN says an attack on Rafah could disrupt the distribution of aid to keep Palestinians alive across Gaza. The Rafah crossing into Egypt, the main entry point for aid into Gaza, is within the evacuation zone. The crossing remained open Monday after the Israeli order.

Jan Egeland, secretary general of the Norwegian Refugee Council, condemned the “forced and illegal” evacuation order and the idea that people should go to Muwasi.

“The area is already overloaded and lacking vital services,” Egeland said. He said an Israeli attack could lead to “the deadliest phase of this war.”

Israel’s bombings and ground offensives in Gaza have killed more than 34,700 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them children and women, according to Gaza health authorities. The count does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. More than 80% of the 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes and hundreds of thousands of people in the north are on the brink of famine, according to the UN.

Tensions escalated on Sunday when Hamas fired rockets at Israeli troops positioned on the border with Gaza, near Israel’s main crossing point for the delivery of humanitarian aid, killing four soldiers. Israel has closed the crossing – but Shoshani said this would not affect the amount of aid entering Gaza since others are working.

Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes on Rafah killed 22 people, including children and two infants, according to a hospital.

The war was sparked by the unprecedented Oct. 7 raid in southern Israel, in which Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped about 250 hostages. After exchanges during the November ceasefire, Hamas is still holding in captivity around a hundred Israelis as well as the bodies of around thirty others.

The ceasefire mediators – the United States, Egypt and Qatar – appeared to be scrambling to salvage a ceasefire deal they tried to push through last week. Egypt said Monday it was in contact with all parties to “prevent the situation from getting… out of control.”

CIA Director William Burns, who was in Cairo to discuss the deal, traveled to meet with Qatar’s prime minister, an official familiar with the matter said. It was unclear whether the next planned trip to Israel would take place. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door negotiations.

In a fiery speech Sunday evening marking Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, Netanyahu rejected international pressure to end the war, saying that “if Israel is forced to stand alone, Israel will be alone.”

On Monday, Netanyahu accused Hamas of “torpedoing” a deal by failing to back down from demanding an end to the war and a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops in exchange for the release of the hostages, which he called “extreme.” .

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Bassem Mroue reported from Beirut. Zeke Miller contributed to this report from Washington.