An Israeli official said Saturday the government intended to renew talks for a Gaza hostage release deal in the coming days, after a meeting with mediators in Paris.
“There is an intention to renew the talks this week and there is an agreement,” the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
The Israeli official did not elaborate on what had been agreed. However, Israeli media reported that intelligence chief David Barnea had agreed on a new framework for the stalled negotiations with mediators, CIA Director Bill Burns and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
Washington said top diplomat Antony Blinken had also spoken with Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz about new efforts to achieve a ceasefire and reopen the border crossing in Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah.
Al-Qahera News, which has links with Egyptian intelligence, said Cairo was continuing “its efforts to reactivate ceasefire negotiations and exchange prisoners and detainees.”
It added that Egypt was exerting “all kinds of pressure on Israel to urgently let in the aid and fuel” stranded at the Rafah crossing after its closure by Israel earlier this month.
Talks aimed at reaching a hostage release and truce deal for Gaza ground to a halt this month after Israel launched a military operation in Rafah.
Israeli air strikes and artillery pounded Rafah on Saturday, despite the United Nation’s top court ordering an immediate halt to its military offensive in the southern Gazan city.
At the same time, renewed efforts were underway in Paris, aimed at securing a ceasefire in the war sparked by Palestinian militant group Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel.
In a case brought by South Africa alleging the Israeli military operation amounts to “genocide,” the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ordered Israel to halt its Rafah offensive and demanded the immediate release of hostages still held by Palestinian militants.
The Hague-based ICJ, whose orders are legally binding but lack direct enforcement mechanisms, also instructed Israel to reopen the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which Israel closed earlier this month.
Israel gave no indication it was preparing to change course in Rafah, insisting the court had got it wrong.
‘Nothing left here’
In spite of the ICJ ruling, Israel carried out strikes throughout the Gaza Strip on Saturday morning, as fighting raged between the army and Hamas’s armed wing.
Palestinian witnesses and AFP teams reported Israeli strikes or shelling in Rafah, the central city of Deir al-Balah, Gaza City, Jabalia refugee camp and elsewhere.
In its ruling, the ICJ said Israel must “immediately halt its military offensive, and any other action in the Rafah Governorate, which may inflict on the Palestinian group in Gaza conditions of life that could bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”
The UN court ordered Israel to allow UN-mandated investigators “unimpeded access” to Gaza to look into the genocide allegations.
It also instructed Israel to open the Rafah crossing for the “unhindered provision at scale” of humanitarian aid, and also called for the “immediate and unconditional release” of the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
With AFP
