At least 236 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since the ceasefire took effect, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
Three Israeli soldiers have been killed by Palestinian fighters in the same period, according to the Israeli military.
Hamas said on Friday that it agreed with other Palestinian factions to hand over governance of Gaza to a committee of Palestinian technocrats.
The statement also said the factions agreed to „establishing an international committee to oversee the financing and implementation of the reconstruction of the Strip” and to take „all necessary measures to maintain security and stability throughout the Strip”.
The statement followed a meeting in Cairo, Egypt.
A Hamas delegation is set to meet Qatari and Egyptian officials in Cairo on Monday to discuss the Gaza ceasefire, AFP reported.
The reports said the delegation, headed by Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, will discuss „the dozens of air strikes that killed dozens in the Gaza Strip“ on Sunday.
The Israel Defense Forces directly blamed Hamas for the attack, but Trump’s comment appeared to echo the assertion by the terror group that the incident occurred in an area under Israeli control, where they claim to have had no contact with their operatives for months.
“As you know, they’ve been quite rambunctious. They’ve been doing some shooting, and we think maybe the leadership isn’t involved in that,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One.
(…)
Two Israeli soldiers — Maj. Yaniv Kula, 26, and Staff Sgt. Itay Yavetz — were killed and three were wounded when terror operatives launched an attack on troops in the Rafah area.
The Israeli military said the strikes were in response to an alleged „attack“ by Palestinians on its troops in southern Rafah involving a rocket-propelled grenade and sniper fire.
There were no immediate reports of Israeli casualties.
The armed wing of Hamas, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, denied any knowledge of or connection to the alleged attack. The group said it has had no contact with its fighters in that area since March.
“We have no involvement in any events occurring in those areas and cannot communicate with any of our fighters there, if any of them remain alive,” the group said in a statement, adding that it remains committed to the ceasefire.
A disturbing video from Gaza shows Hamas fighters executing seven men accused of collaborating with Israel. Reuters verified the footage’s location in Gaza City and confirmed it was filmed Monday. Hamas sources admitted responsibility, vowing zero tolerance for “traitors” as fighters reemerge on Gaza’s streets following the ceasefire.
What happened?
The Sahem unit, an armed unit affiliated with the Interior Ministry, said the clashes started on Saturday when “an outlaw gang killed resistance fighters from the Qassam Brigades”, the armed wing of Hamas, near the Jordan Field Hospital in Gaza City.
Witnesses told the BBC that 300 Hamas fighters stormed a residential block where Doghmush gunmen were holed up, and a Palestinian security source told the Reuters news agency that Hamas launched a campaign in Gaza City that killed 32 members of “a gang”.
According to the Interior Ministry, eight Hamas members and 19 clan members were killed.
Israel‘s Channel 12 on Monday reported that 13 Israeli prisoners were released in the second batch and handed over to the International Red Cross in Gaza.
The Reuters news agency says Hamas has handed over seven Israeli captives to the ICRC.
It cited an official involved in the operation.
Israel’s YNet and Hayom newspapers have also reported on the move.
Hamas has until noon on Monday to hand them to the Red Cross.
9 hr 27 min ago
Under the terms of the deal brokered by the US and other mediators, the redeployment means that over the next three days, and before the deadline of 12 p.m. local time on Monday, the hostages held by Hamas will be handed over, and nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Israel will be freed.
The government approves the deal to free all of the hostages from captivity in Gaza, the Prime Minister’s Office says.
The IDF now will withdraw to new lines inside of the Gaza Strip, after which the 72-hour window for Hamas to release all the hostages will commence.
Egypt and Qatar, alongside Hamas, are using „all means available“ to secure the release of Marwan Barghouti as part of the Gaza ceasefire agreement between the group and Israel, three sources informed on the negotiations have told Middle East Eye.
The long-imprisoned Palestinian political leader is on a list “of around one hundred senior Palestinian prisoners” being discussed ahead of the second phase of the truce deal, a source close to the negotiations said.
“Marwan alongside [a] few others are at the top of that list,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the details.
A further possible boost to hopes for peace came with a supportive statement from Iran-backed Islamic Jihad, which is smaller than Hamas but seen as more hardline.
(…)
„What is important is that Netanyahu does not sabotage this, because now that Hamas agreed, Netanyahu will disagree, as he usually does,“ said Jerusalem resident Jamal Shihada.
Israeli fire killed six people across Gaza Strip, local authorities said. One strike killed four people in a house in Gaza City while another killed two others in Khan Younis in the south, medical workers and local authorities said.
(16 hours ago)
Right now, it’s far too dangerous to do that. We are already in discussions on details to be worked out. This is not about Gaza alone, this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.
updated 3 Hours Ago
“Israel must immediately stop the bombing of Gaza, so that we can get the Hostages out safely and quickly!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“We are already in discussions on details to be worked out. This is not about Gaza alone, this is about long sought PEACE in the Middle East.”
It also said it agrees to hand over the administration of Gaza to an independent body of Palestinian technocrats, “based on Palestinian national consensus and Arab and Islamic support”.
“Other issues mentioned in President Trump’s proposal regarding the future of the Gaza Strip and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are connected to a unified national position and relevant international laws and resolutions,” Hamas said.
They “will be addressed through a comprehensive Palestinian national framework, in which Hamas will participate and contribute responsibly”.
“An Agreement must be reached with Hamas by Sunday Evening at SIX (6) P.M., Washington, D.C. time,” he went on. “Every Country has signed on! If this LAST CHANCE agreement is not reached, all HELL, like no one has ever seen before, will break out against Hamas. THERE WILL BE PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST ONE WAY OR THE OTHER.”
Trump said he was asking “all innocent Palestinians” to leave areas of Gaza that are under siege by Israel “for safer parts of Gaza.”
Der Vernichtungskrieg gegen die Hamas und Gaza sei alternativlos und aus Notwehr erfolgt, behauptet Israels Ministerpräsident Netanjahu. Was aber, wenn sich der Terroranschlag vom 7. Oktober 2023 hätte verhindern lassen? Vieles spricht dafür, dass seine rechtsgerichtete Regierung die Dinge hat geschehen lassen. Müsste die Geschichte dann nicht umgeschrieben werden, fragt sich Ralf Wurzbacher.
“The Hamas Movement is still awaiting the response of the Zionist enemy on the proposal presented by mediators to the movement on August 18, which Hamas and the Palestinian factions have accepted,” the group said in a statement shared on its official Telegram channel.
“In this context, Hamas reiterates its readiness to go for a comprehensive deal whereby all enemy prisoners held by the Resistance would be released, in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners held by the occupation, and as part of an agreement that ends the war on Gaza, ensures the full withdrawal of all occupation forces from the entire Gaza Strip, reopens the crossings to enter all Gaza’s essential needs, and begins the reconstruction process,” it said.
(September 3, 2025)
Hamas has agreed to ceasefire proposals presented by the mediators, but it has refused to disarm until the Palestinian state is established as part of the so-called two-state solution. Qatar, which has mediated in the conflict, said that Israel has yet to agree to its latest ceasefire proposal, which was accepted by Hamas last month.
Hamas has agreed to the latest proposal from regional mediators for a Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal with Israel, a source in the Palestinian armed group has told the BBC.
The proposal from Egypt and Qatar is said to be based on a two-stage framework put forward by US envoy Steve Witkoff in June.
It would see Hamas free around half of the 50 remaining Israeli hostages – 20 of whom are believed to be alive – in two batches during an initial 60-day truce. There would also be negotiations on a permanent ceasefire.
“The decision has been made,” Amit Sega, chief political analyst with Channel 12, quoted an unnamed senior official in Netanyahu’s office as saying.
“Hamas won’t release more hostages without total surrender, and we won’t surrender. If we don’t act now, the hostages will starve to death and Gaza will remain under Hamas’s control.”
(August 4, 2025)
“The horror videos by Hamas stem from one goal – their attempt to pressure the State of Israel,” said Itmar Ben Gvir, the right-wing firebrand, in remarks made during a controversial visit to the Temple Mount, sacred for both Jews and Muslims, at the weekend.
“It is from here that a message must be sent: to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, declare sovereignty over all of Gaza, eliminate every Hamas member, and encourage voluntary emigration. Only in this way will we bring back the hostages and win the war,” Ben Gvir added.
(November 30, 2023)
The document circulated widely among Israeli military and intelligence leaders, but experts determined that an attack of that scale and ambition was beyond Hamas’s capabilities, according to documents and officials. It is unclear whether Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu or other top political leaders saw the document, as well.
(…)
Last year, shortly after the document was obtained, officials in the Israeli military’s Gaza division, which is responsible for defending the border with Gaza, said that Hamas’s intentions were unclear.
“It is not yet possible to determine whether the plan has been fully accepted and how it will be manifested,” read a military assessment reviewed by The Times.
(October 22, 2023)
With Hamas in power in Gaza, coupled with a deliberately emaciated PA in the West Bank, Netanyahu could claim there was no Palestinian partner for negotiation, and he could continue to crisscross the West Bank with settlements.
In the aftermath of the bloody Black Shabbat, as it is now called in Israel, and an extensive aerial bombing campaign, Israel is poised “go after Hamas leadership” — whatever that means — in a costly ground offensive.
The key question is what happens the “day after” — something Netanyahu has never been adept at answering. His concept appears to be apres moi, le deluge — after me, chaos.
(November 22, 2024)
Hamas political bureau member Mousa Abu Marzouk knows a thing or two about Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s decades-long support for the group.
In fact, Mr. Abu Marzouk is Exhibit A.
Thanks to Mr. Netanyahu, Mr. Abu Marzouk operates from the luxury of Doha instead of rotting in an Israeli jail since 1996 when Mr. Netanyahu first became prime minister.
In a move never adequately justified, Mr. Netanyahu, in his first year in office, dropped a request by his predecessor, Shimon Peres, for Mr. Abu Marzouk’s extradition from the United States, where he was a resident.
(September 28, 2016)
After Rabin‘s assassination by a Jewish ultranationalist opposed to Israel‘s peace moves in 1995, Peres became acting prime minister. But he failed to capitalize on the widespread sympathy for the fallen leader and lost a razor-thin election the following year to Netanyahu.
In one famous incident, an angry Peres rhetorically asked a gathering of his Labor Party whether he was a „loser.“ Resounding calls of „yes“ rained down on him.
Peres would later blame a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings for his defeat. He described his visit to the scene of a deadly bus explosion in Jerusalem, where people started screaming „killer“ and „murderer“ at him. „I knew that I lost the election,“ he said.
(March 4, 1996(
In a leaflet distributed in Jerusalem today, „The Cells of the Martyr the Engineer Yahya Ayyash — the New Pupils“ said the bombing was „the end of our violent revenge“ for the death of Mr. Ayyash, a Hamas bomb maker killed on Jan. 5 in the Gaza Strip by an exploding cellular phone widely believed to have been planted by Israeli agents.
The Cells of the Martyr group had taken responsibility for the suicide bombings last Sunday in Jerusalem and in the coastal Israeli town of Ashkelon, and appears to be a renegade offshoot of the armed wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades.
A leaflet issued last Thursday by the Qassam Brigades offered an eight-day respite from attacks while Israel considered the Brigades‘ conditions for a cease-fire: an end to Israeli violence against Hamas members and other Palestinians and the release of all Hamas prisoners in Israel jails.
Ignoring that offer, The Cells of the Martyr blew up a bus today and set its own terms for a cease-fire, declaring that it would halt attacks for three months to enable Hamas and Israel to reach a truce mediated by the Palestinian Authority, the governing body led by Yasir Arafat.
The Cells criticized the Qassam Brigades for its truce offer, and warned that attacks would resume if Israel pursued Hamas militants. Addressing Israelis ahead of the May 29 national election, the group said, „Neither the Labor party nor the Likud party will give you security as long as your Government practices terrorism against us and continues to arrest members of our people.“
(February 26, 1996)
Although Government and opposition leaders joined in condemning the attacks and both sides refrained from recriminations, there was no question that the revival of terror attacks, with the worst carnage to date in suicide bombings, would have a profound impact on the campaign for national elections on May 29.
While Prime Minister Shimon Peres and his Labor Party have held a sizable lead in public-opinion polls over the conservative Likud opposition since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November, all political pundits have said that could change sharply and rapidly if Palestinian terrorists struck again.
He is seen sitting in what appears to be a tunnel, documenting his daily food intake in a handwritten chart. On several days, the chart reads “no food,” while on others it lists only “lentils.”
Later Saturday, the family also cleared for publication a second video dated July 27, in which David, visibly weakened and gaunt, says he has been without proper food or water for an extended period and claims he was forced by his captors to dig his own grave.