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Hamas has accepted a new ceasefire proposal for Gaza, a senior member from the group said Monday, after a fresh diplomatic push to end more than 22 months of war.Mediators Egypt and Qatar, backed by the United States, have struggled to secure a lasting truce in the conflict, which has triggered a dire humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.But after receiving a new proposal from mediators, Hamas said it was ready for talks.”The movement has submitted its response, agreeing to the mediators’ new proposal. We pray to God to extinguish the fire of this war on our people,” senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said on Facebook.Earlier a Hamas source told AFP the group accepted the proposal “without requesting any amendments”.Egypt said it and Qatar had sent the new proposal to Israel, adding “the ball is now in its court”. Israel has yet to respond.A Palestinian source familiar with the talks said mediators were “expected to announce that an agreement has been reached and set a date for the resumption of talks”, adding guarantees were offered to ensure implementation and pursue a permanent solution.According to a report in Egyptian state-linked outlet Al-Qahera, the deal proposed an initial 60-day truce, a partial hostage release, the release of some Palestinian prisoners and provisions to allow for the entry of aid.The proposal comes more than a week after Israel’s security cabinet approved plans to conquer Gaza City and nearby refugee camps, which has sparked international outcry as well as domestic opposition.- ‘Confronted and destroyed’ -Out of 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s October 2023 attack that triggered the war, 49 are still held in Gaza including 27 the Israeli military says are dead.Earlier, an Islamic Jihad source said “the remaining captives would be released in a second phase”, with negotiations for a broader settlement to follow.They added that “all factions are supportive” of the Egyptian and Qatari proposal.US President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social: “We will only see the return of the remaining hostages when Hamas is confronted and destroyed!!!””The sooner this takes place, the better the chances of success will be.”Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel “will agree to an agreement in which all the hostages are released at once and according to our conditions for ending the war”.Earlier Monday, Netanyahu said he reviewed plans for the upcoming offensive in Gaza while meeting the head of the army and minister of defence and stressed that Hamas was under “extreme pressure”. Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty, visiting the Rafah border crossing with Gaza on Monday, said Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani was visiting “to consolidate our existing common efforts in order to apply maximum pressure on the two sides to reach a deal as soon as possible”.Alluding to the dire humanitarian conditions for the more than two million people living in the Gaza Strip, where UN agencies and aid groups have warned of famine, Abdelatty stressed the urgency of reaching an agreement.”The current situation on the ground is beyond imagination,” he said.Egypt said on Monday it was willing to join a potential international force deployed to Gaza, but only if backed by a UN Security Council resolution and accompanied by a “political horizon”.- ‘Deliberate’ starvation -On the ground, Gaza’s civil defence agency said Israeli forces killed at least 20 people across the territory on Monday, including six in the south.Contacted by AFP, the Israeli military said it was “not aware of any casualties as a result of IDF fire” in the southern areas reported by the civil defence.Media restrictions in Gaza and difficulties accessing swathes of the Palestinian territory mean AFP is unable to independently verify the tolls and details provided by the civil defence agency or the Israeli military.Eyewitnesses later told AFP that residential areas, including Zeitoun and al Sabra neighbourhoods, in Gaza City were under heavy fire, with tanks and heavy artillery targeting the area. Rights group Amnesty International meanwhile accused Israel of enacting a “deliberate policy” of starvation in Gaza and “systematically destroying the health, well-being and social fabric of Palestinian life”.Israel, while heavily restricting aid allowed into Gaza, has repeatedly rejected claims of deliberate starvation.Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official figures.Israel’s offensive has killed more than 62,004 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza which the United Nations considers reliable.

At the Rafah crossing into the Gaza Strip, hundreds of aid trucks sat unmoving in the Egyptian desert, stuck for days with only a handful allowed through by Israel to relieve the humanitarian disaster across the border.After nearly two years of war, UN-backed experts have said famine is unfolding in the Palestinian territory, while there are also dire shortages of clean water and medicines.Yet aid groups say the flow of essential supplies remains painfully slow, despite the growing crisis.Israel continues to deny entry for life-saving medical equipment, shelters and parts for water infrastructure, four UN officials, several truck drivers and an Egyptian Red Crescent volunteer told AFP.They said the supplies were often rejected for being “dual-use”, meaning they could be put to military use, or for minor packaging flaws.Some materials “just because they are metallic are not allowed to enter,” said Amande Bazerolle, head of emergency response in Gaza at French medical charity MSF.Sitting on the Egyptian side was a truckload of intensive care gurneys baking in the sun, held back by the Israelis despite the UN reporting a severe shortage in Gaza, because one pallet was made of plastic instead of wood, aid workers said.Other shipments were turned away because “a single pallet is askew, or the cling film isn’t wrapped satisfactorily”, said an Egyptian Red Crescent volunteer.Even with everything lined up and approved beforehand, shipments can still be turned back, said Amal Emam, chief of the Egyptian Red Crescent.”You can have a UN approval number stuck to the side of a pallet, which means it should cross, it’s been approved by all sides, including COGAT, but then it gets to the border and it’s turned back, just like that.”COGAT is the Israeli ministry of defence agency that oversees civil affairs in the Palestinian territories.Complying with the restrictions was also incredibly costly, Emam said.”I have never in my life as a humanitarian seen these kinds of obstacles being put to every bit of aid, down to the last inch of gauze,” she added.- ‘Engineered hunger’ -Simple medicines such as ibuprofen can take a week to cross into Gaza.Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation often has to rush to get insulin and other temperature-sensitive medicines through in regular trucks when Israeli officials reject the use of refrigerated containers.In a tent warehouse, dozens of oxygen tanks sat abandoned on Monday, gathering dust months after they were rejected, alongside wheelchairs, portable toilets and generators.”It’s like they’re rejecting anything that can give some semblance of humanity,” a UN staffer told AFP, requesting anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN’s humanitarian agency OCHA, said the prohibited list “is pages and pages of things”.Truck drivers have reported spending days stuck watching other vehicles that are often carrying identical supplies either waved through or rejected without explanation.Egyptian driver Mahmoud El-Sheikh said he had been waiting for 13 days in scorching heat with a truck full of flour. “Yesterday, 300 trucks were sent back. Only 35 were allowed in,” he said. “It’s all at their discretion.”Another driver, Hussein Gomaa, said up to 150 trucks lined up each night on the Egyptian side, but in the morning “the Israelis only inspect however many they want and send the rest of us back”.AFP could not independently verify the daily aid volume entering Gaza from Egypt.A WHO official said that at most 50 trucks enter Gaza every day while Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty said only 130-150 trucks cross daily, sometimes 200 — about a third of what is needed.”This is engineered hunger,” Abdelatty said on Monday, adding that over 5,000 trucks were waiting at the border.- ‘Losing limbs’ -Last week, COGAT denied blocking aid.In a post on X, it said Israel facilitates humanitarian aid while accusing Hamas of exploiting aid to “strengthen its military capabilities” and said 380 trucks entered Gaza last Wednesday.MSF warned aid bottlenecks were costing lives.It cannot bring in vital medical supplies as basic as scalpels or external fixators used to treat broken limbs.”People are at risk of losing limbs because we don’t have basic tools,” Bazerolle said.She added supplies were depleting faster than expected. “We order for three or five months and then in two months it’s gone.” 

Irish author Sally Rooney has vowed to give fees generated by two BBC adaptations of her books to the Palestine Action group — banned recently in the UK as a terrorist organisation — as a government spokesperson on Monday warned anyone flouting the law risked prosecution.The writer, whose second novel “Normal People” (2018) and its 2020 BBC television adaptation won her international acclaim, announced her plans in the Irish Times.Rooney said she had chosen the Dublin-based newspaper to publicise her intention rather than a UK one as doing so “would now be illegal” after the government banned Palestine Action as a terrorist group in early July.”The UK’s state broadcaster… regularly pays me residual fees. I want to be clear that I intend to use these proceeds of my work, as well as my public platform generally, to go on supporting Palestine Action and direct action against genocide in whatever way I can,” she wrote.More than 700 people have been arrested, mostly at demonstrations, since the group was outlawed under the Terrorism Act 2000.”I feel obliged to state once more that like the hundreds of protesters arrested last weekend, I too support Palestine Action. If this makes me a ‘supporter of terror’ under UK law, so be it’,” Rooney said.The government ban on Palestine Action came into force on July 5, days after it took responsibility for a break-in at an air force base in southern England that caused an estimated £7.0 million ($9.3 million) of damage to two aircraft.The group said its activists were responding to Britain’s indirect military support for Israel during the war in Gaza.Being a member of Palestine Action or supporting the group is now a criminal offence in Britain, punishable by up to 14 years in prison.- Record arrests -More than 500 people were arrested at a protest in London’s Parliament Square on August 9 for displaying placards backing the group.The number is thought to be the highest-ever recorded number of detentions at a single protest in the capital.At least 60 of them are due to face prosecution, police said.Britain’s interior minister Yvette Cooper has defended the Labour government’s proscription of the group, stating that “UK national security and public safety must always be our top priority”.”The assessments are very clear — this is not a non-violent organisation,” she said.Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s official spokesperson declined to be drawn specifically on Rooney’s comments.But the spokesperson added: “Support for a proscribed organisation is an offence under the Terrorism Act and obviously the police will… implement the law.”Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, the ambassador of the state of Palestine in Ireland, praised Rooney for “using her voice to call out international law and human rights violations in Palestine”.”I hope these calls result in practical actions that will stop the horrors we’re witnessing carried out by Israel in Palestine; to stop the genocide and forced displacement and end the Israeli occupation,” she said.Ireland confirmed the appointment of a full Palestinian ambassador last November after Dublin formally recognised a Palestinian state earlier in 2024.

US envoy Tom Barrack on Monday called on Israel to honour commitments under a ceasefire that ended its war with Hezbollah, after the Lebanese government launched a process to disarm the militant group.Under the November truce, which ended more than a year of hostilities including two months of all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed group was to withdraw its fighters from near the Israeli border and weapons were to come under the control of the Lebanese state.Israel was to withdraw its troops from the country but has kept them at five border points it deems strategic and has continued to strike Lebanon, threatening to do so until Hezbollah has been disarmed.”There’s always a step-by-step approach but I think the Lebanese government has done their part. They’ve taken the first step. Now what we need is Israel to comply,” Barrack said following a meeting in Beirut with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun.”We’re all moving in the right direction,” he said after meeting parliament speaker Nabih Berri.Berri, a Hezbollah ally, said Israel’s commitment to the ceasefire and its troop withdrawal was “the gateway to stability in Lebanon”, a statement said.- ‘Progress’ -Asked by reporters whether he expected to see Israel fully withdraw from Lebanese territory and stop its violations, Barrack said that “that’s exactly the next step” needed.”We need participation on the part of Israel, and we need an economic plan for prosperity, restoration and renovation,” the US diplomat added, with Lebanon weighed down by an economic crisis.Barrack said Washington was “in the process of now discussing with Israel what their position is”, adding that “in the next few weeks you’re going to see progress on all sides.””It means a better life for the people… and at least the beginning of a roadway to a different kind of dialogue” in the region, he said.The visit comes after Lebanon’s cabinet tasked the army with developing a plan to disarm Hezbollah by year end — an unprecedented step since civil war factions gave up their weapons decades ago.The cabinet has also tackled a US proposal that includes a timetable for Hezbollah’s disarmament, with Washington pressing Lebanon to take action.The cabinet endorsed the introduction of the US text, which lists 11 objectives including to “ensure the sustainability” of the ceasefire, and to phase out “the armed presence of all non-state actors, including Hezbollah” across all Lebanese territory.It also provides for demarcating Lebanon’s land borders with Israel and neighbouring Syria, and a process involving the international community to support reconstruction.- ‘Lebanese process’ -Aoun told Barrack that what was needed was for “other parties to adhere to the contents” of the joint declaration, “more support for the Lebanese army”, and expedited steps towards reconstruction, the presidency said.Prime Minister Nawaf Salam said Washington needed to “fulfil its responsibility in pressuring Israel halt hostilities”, withdraw troops and release Lebanese prisoners it holds.Hezbollah, the only faction that kept its weapons after Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, emerged badly weakened from last year’s war with Israel.On Friday, Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem vowed to fight plans to disarm, saying that “the resistance will not surrender its weapons while… occupation persists”.On Sunday, Aoun told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya channel authorities would do “everything possible… to spare Lebanon any internal or external shock”. If Lebanon rejected the US plan, “then Israel will intensify its attacks, Lebanon will be economically isolated, and none of us will be able to respond to the aggression”, he said.Barrack on Monday stressed that “dealing with Hezbollah, as we’ve always said, is a Lebanese process”.