Hamas appears unlikely to participate in a new round of talks on a Gaza ceasefire deal on Thursday, further dampening hopes of an agreement that might stave off expected retaliatory strikes by Iran against Israel for the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran last month.
Most observers already had low expectations of the ceasefire talks, with Israel hardening its position in recent weeks and fears that Hamas, now led by its most hardline faction, would offer few concessions.
Iran this week rejected calls by western powers not to retaliate for the apparent assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, on 31 July, just hours after an Israeli strike in Beirut killed a senior commander of Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed militant group in Lebanon.
The prospect of imminent Iranian strikes against Israel has raised fears of a wider conflict after more than 10 months of war in Gaza. US and Iranian officials have both suggested significant progress towards a ceasefire in Gaza might bring immediate regional de-escalation.
Asked on Tuesday if he thought Iran might forgo a retaliatory strike if a Gaza ceasefire was reached, the US president, Joe Biden, said: “That’s my expectation.”
The White House warned that a “significant set of attacks” by Iran and its allies was possible as soon as this week, and sent fighter jets, anti-missile warships and a guided missile submarine to the region in support of Israel.
In April, after two Iranian generals were killed in a strike on Tehran’s embassy in Syria, Iran launched hundreds of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles towards Israel, damaging two airbases. Almost all of the weapons were shot down before they reached their targets.
In a statement on Sunday, Hamas said mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar should submit a plan to implement what was agreed on last month, based on Biden’s proposal, “instead of going to more rounds of negotiations or new proposals that provide cover for the occupation’s aggression”.
Hamas said it has shown flexibility throughout the negotiating process but that Israeli actions indicated that it was not serious about pursuing a ceasefire agreement.
On Wednesday, a Hamas official said the Islamist movement, which seized power in Gaza in 2007, was “continuing its consultations with the mediators”.
“Hamas wants the Biden plan imposed and doesn’t want to negotiate just to negotiate,” the official said, referring to a ceasefire proposal laid out in late May by Biden.
“We have to force the [Israeli] occupation government to stop its policy, which consists of dragging out the negotiations, and force it to stop massacring our people.”
Hamas and Israel disagree on the duration of any ceasefire and the number and type of Palestinian prisoners released from Israeli jails in any deal in return for the freedom of hostages held in Gaza. Hamas want a definitive end to the war but Israeli negotiators have only offered a pause in hostilities.
Successive rounds of talks since late December have failed to bridge the gaps.
The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, confirmed on Wednesday Israel’s participation.
The head of Israel’s Mossad overseas spy agency, David Barnea, and Ronen Bar, chief of the Shin Bet internal security service, are part of the Israeli negotiating team, Netanyahu’s spokesperson said.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, said on social media platform X that the country remained on “high alert”.
Fearing an attack by Iran and Hezbollah, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art said it had stashed away its most valuable pieces, including paintings by Pablo Picasso and Gustav Klimt.
The museum’s director, Tania Coen-Uzzielli, said: “In the last three, four, five days, when this new threat from Hezbollah and from Iran came on the table again, we understood that we needed to take other precautions.”
Biden’s envoy for the conflict, Amos Hochstein, was in Beirut on Wednesday where he warned the clock was ticking for a Gaza ceasefire.
“There is no more time to waste and there’s no more valid excuses from any party for any further delay,” he said after talks with Lebanon’s parliament speaker Nabih Berri.
Hezbollah are likely to be part of any Iranian strike, and have a powerful armoury of missiles and rockets which might overwhelm Israel’s air defence systems. The militant group has been engaged in a war of attrition with Israel since October.
Western governments have issued advisories against travel to Lebanon, and have prepared contingency plans to evacuate their nationals from the region if full-scale conflict breaks out.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s 7 October attack on southern Israel which resulted in the deaths of about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. Militants also seized 251 people, 111 of whom are still held captive in Gaza, including 39 the Israeli military said are dead.
Israel’s retaliatory military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 39,965 people, according to the latest toll from the territory’s health ministry, which does not provide a breakdown of civilian and militant deaths.
The Israeli military said it carried out dozens of air strikes across the Gaza Strip in the last 24 hours and that its troops were “continuing precise, intelligence-based operational activity in the area of Tel al-Sultan” just north of of Rafah city.
The Gaza civil defence agency said its emergency teams pulled the bodies of four people from the same family from the rubble of a bombed apartment in the Qatari-built residential complex of Hamad, near Khan Yunis.
Residents of central Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp said it was struck by a missile after midnight.
“We were sleeping … and were surprised by a missile targeting the neighbours, children, their father and mother,” Jihad al-Sharif told AFPTV.
“The explosion was terrible,” he said, adding his family emerged to find the remains of children in the middle of the street.
Agencies contributed to this article