Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu said any Gaza ceasefire deal must allow Israel to resume fighting until its objectives are met.
Hamas wants mediators to guarantee a permanent ceasefire, but Mr Netanyahu is vowing to keep fighting until Israel destroys Hamas’s military and governing capabilities.
“Any deal will allow Israel to return and fight until all the goals of the war are achieved,” Mr Netanyahu said in a statement on Sunday.
Five days after Hamas accepted a key part of the plan, two officials from the Palestinian militant group said the group was awaiting Israel’s response to its latest proposal.
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Hamas has dropped a key demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before it would sign an agreement. Instead, it said it would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout the six-week first phase, a Hamas source said on Saturday.
But Mr Netanyahu said he insisted the deal must not prevent Israel from resuming fighting until its war objectives are met.
The Israeli prime minister said the plan that has been agreed to by Israel and welcomed by US president Joe Biden will allow Israel to return hostages without infringing on the other objectives of the war.
Mr Netanyahu was scheduled to hold consultations late on Sunday on the next steps in negotiating the three-phase plan that was presented in May by Mr Biden and is being mediated by Qatar and Egypt. It aims to end the war and free about 120 Israeli hostages being held in Gaza.
In Gaza, Israeli forces pounded Gaza City early on Monday, sending columns of tanks into the heart of the city from different directions in what residents said was one of the heaviest attacks since October 7th.
The Gaza Civil Emergency Service said they believed dozens of people were killed in eastern Gaza areas but emergency teams were unable to reach them because of ongoing offensives in Tel Al-Hawa, Sabra, Daraj, Rimal, and Tuffah suburbs.
The Israeli military said in a statement it had been mounting an operation against militant infrastructure in the Gaza Strip. – Agencies