Hamas officials say they have accepted a proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal that would include the release of half of the approximately 20 remaining living Israeli hostages as part of a phased resolution to the war, as Gaza health officials said 62,000 Palestinians had died in the 22 months of war.
The proposed deal follows negotiations between Hamas and Egyptian and Qatari officials that have been taking place in Cairo in recent days, and comes after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was confronted on Sunday by Israel’s biggest protests of the war, which called for a deal to secure the release of the hostages.
Netanyahu has criticised the large-scale street protests against his handling of the Gaza war, and his failure to secure the release of the remaining hostages, claiming that demonstrators were giving comfort to Hamas’s position in negotiations.
Organisers of the protests, for their part, have called for a fresh demonstrations this Sunday.
The latest Gaza ceasefire proposal agreed by Hamas includes a suspension of military operations for 60 days and could be seen as a path to reach a comprehensive deal to end the nearly two-year-long war, according to Egyptian sources.
During the period of suspension, Palestinian prisoners would be exchanged in return for half of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
The suggestion of movement in the long-running ceasefire negotiations comes as Egypt – long regarded as a key mediator between Hamas and Israel – has taken a more central role in the talks, and amid threats by Israel to launch a large new military offensive to take control of Gaza City, potentially displacing up to 1 million Palestinians.
The proposal was expected to be presented to Israel on Monday, although Netanyahu has said Israel is no longer interested in part deals, saying it will only agree to end the war if Hamas releases all of the hostages at once, disarms, and allows for the demilitarisation of Gaza.
Realistically, however, the latest round of talks – which Arab mediators suggest has gone a long way towards meeting previous Israeli objections, and is based on a US-proposed framework – is bound to feed into a febrile political situation in Israel, which is facing growing and acrimonious social and political divisions.
Netanyahu has faced high-profile pushback from senior security officials who have warned that the lives of the remaining hostages could be in peril in the event of a new offensive to take Gaza City, warnings that have fed into the mass protests.
The Israeli government’s plan to seize control of Gaza City has stirred alarm at home and abroad, as it has come under intensifying international pressure over growing starvation in Gaza, which it is blamed for, and accusations of genocide.
Talks have been continuing in Egypt with participants including the Qatari prime minister, Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the head of Egypt’s general intelligence service, and representatives of the Palestinian factions in Gaza, who are under pressure to reach a deal.
While Netanyahu received the backing of the US president, Donald Trump, on Monday for “confronting and defeating Hamas”, the vast scale of the demonstrations in Israel on Sunday – involving more than 400,000 people – suggested an increasing weariness in the country over the war and fury about missed opportunities to secure the hostages’ release.
In response to the protests, Netanyahu, who is wanted by the international criminal court over allegations of war crimes in Gaza, accused those participating of giving comfort to Hamas.
He said in a statement: “The people who are calling today for the war’s end without Hamas’s defeat are not only toughening Hamas’s stance and distancing our hostages’ release, they are also ensuring that the atrocities of October 7 will recur time and again, and that our sons and daughters will have to fight time and again in an endless war.
“Therefore, in order to advance our hostages’ release and to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, we have to finish the job and defeat Hamas.”
With 50 hostages still held in Gaza – of whom about 20 are believed to be alive – some of those attending the march carried signs referencing the death of the dual US-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was killed by his captors last October along with five other hostages as Israeli troops approached the place where they were being held.
Placards repeated a sentiment expressed by Goldberg-Polin’s father at his son’s funeral – “May your memory be a revolution” – adapting the familiar Jewish expression of condolence: “May your memory be a blessing.”
Responding to Netanyahu’s remarks, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum lambasted the Israeli prime minister, saying: “They have been languishing in Gaza for 22 months, on your watch.”
Netanyahu was also fiercely criticised by the leader of the Israeli opposition Democrats party, Yair Golan, as a man who “lies as he breathes”. He said: “The man who time and again refused to eliminate Hamas’s leaders before October 7, who funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars from Qatar to finance the tunnels and weapons that threaten our hostages.
“This is the same Netanyahu who strengthened Hamas back then, and it is he who is strengthening Hamas now as well. Netanyahu doesn’t know how to win and doesn’t want to free the hostages. He needs an eternal war in order to cling to his seat and to escape a commission of inquiry [into the 7 October Hamas attack that triggered the war].”
Amid the threat of an imminent Israeli ground offensive, thousands of Palestinians have left their homes in eastern areas of Gaza City, under constant Israeli bombardment, for points in the west and south of the shattered territory.