President Joe Biden doesn’t expect to seal a Gaza ceasefire deal in the near future, given a US-backed proposal with global support has not been fully embraced by Israel or Hamas.
Biden said international leaders had discussed the ceasefire at the Group of Seven summit in Italy but, when asked if a truce deal would be reached soon, he replied simply “no”.
However he added: “I haven’t lost hope.”
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The Palestinian militant group responded to the proposal this week by offering changes, which it said aim to guarantee a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli troop withdrawal from Gaza.
The proposal announced by Biden includes those provisions, but Hamas has expressed wariness about whether Israel will implement the terms.
On the Israel-Lebanon border, Hezbollah militants launched rockets and explosive drones against Israeli military posts for a second day in retaliation for the killing of a senior commander.
Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza has killed more than 37,100 people, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
About 52 per cent of those killed are women and children, according to the UN.
Palestinians are facing widespread hunger because the Israel has largely cut off the flow of food, medicine and other supplies.
UN agencies say more than one million people in Gaza could experience the highest level of starvation by mid-July.
Israel launched the war after Hamas’ October 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.
A woman was also fatally wounded by an Israeli strike on a house in southern Lebanon, the state-run National News Agency reported.
Local media reported the strike hit a three-storey residential building and a number of wounded people, including women and children, were transported to local hospitals, which put out a call for blood donations.
It was not immediately clear who the target of the strike was.
And Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels launched two anti-ship cruise missiles and struck a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden, setting it on fire and severely wounding one civilian mariner, authorities said.
The attack was the latest such assault in the Houthis’ campaign over the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite news network will remain closed in Israel — its reporting operations frozen, website blocked and offices shuttered — until late July and possibly longer, an Israeli court said.
The court said on Thursday local time the news outlet must remain shut down for 45 more days because letting it operate could pose a threat to Israel’s security interests, alleging a connection between the Qatari-owned network and the Hamas militant group.
Israel shut down the network’s local operations last month.
Al Jazeera has maintained 24-hour coverage in Gaza during the war, and Israel’s military operations have killed and wounded members of its staff.
Also on Thursday Israeli forces killed three Palestinians, detaining several others, in a daylong raid into the northern West Bank, according to the military and Palestinian health officials.
Israel’s military said it also arrested several Palestinians suspected of militancy and dug up explosives planted in the ground.
Since October 7, more than 530 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank.
— With Reuters
