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Hamas on Friday called on the United States to exert pressure on Israel to reach a Gaza ceasefire agreement.
The call became pertinent following Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu statement that "there is no deal in the making."
The two sides have traded blame over stalling talks for a ceasefire and hostage exchange as Netanyahu faces pressure to seal a deal following the deaths of six Gaza captives.
Hamas’s Qatar-based lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya called on the US to “exert real pressure on Netanyahu and his government” and “abandon their blind bias” towards Israel.
But Netanyahu said there is “not a deal in the making. Unfortunately, it’s not close but we will do everything we can to get them to the point where they do make a deal,” he told US media.
Netanyahu insisted that Israel must retain control over the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egypt-Gaza border to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas, whose October 7, 2023 attack on Israel started the war.
Hamas is demanding complete Israeli withdrawal from the area, adding that Netanyahu’s position “aims to thwart reaching an agreement”.
The Palestinian militant group said a new deal was unnecessary because they agreed months ago to a truce outlined by American Presisent Joe Biden.
“We warned against falling into the trap of Netanyahu… who uses negotiations to prolong the aggression against our people,” Hamas said in a statement.
Washington has been pushing a proposal it said could bridge the gaps between the warring sides, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying “90 per cent is agreed”.
At Israeli protests in several cities this week, Netanyahu’s critics have blamed him for hostages’ deaths, saying he had refused to make necessary concessions for striking a ceasefire deal.
“We’ll do everything so that all hostages will be with us. And if the leaders don’t want to sign a deal, we’ll make them,” said Gil Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, one of the six hostages whose bodies were found in a Gaza tunnel last week.
The October 7 attack by Hamas resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, including some hostages killed in captivity, according to official Israeli figures.
Of the 251 hostages seized by Palestinian militants during the attack, 97 remain in Gaza including 33 the Israeli military said are dead.
Scores were released during a one-week truce in November.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has so far killed at least 40,878 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
Most of the dead are women and children, according to the UN rights office.
Israel kept up its bombardment overnight into Friday, with an AFP correspondent reporting a huge explosion in the east of Gaza City.
Six people were killed and others wounded in an Israeli airstrike on a house southeast of the city, Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Friday.
Israel has killed at least 36 Palestinians including children and militants across the northern West Bank since its assault there started on August 28, according to figures released by the health ministry.
