Prospects for an Israel-Hamas ceasefire dimmed on Sunday after the United States signaled it would veto the latest push for a UN Security Council resolution and mediator Qatar acknowledged that truce talks on the other diplomatic front have hit an impasse.
The languishing efforts to pause the four-month-old war come as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Saturday to reject international appeals to spare Gaza’s southernmost city Rafah, where an estimated 1.5 million people have sought refuge.
Israel’s relentless campaign to root out every Hamas battalion has edged closer to the city, with overnight attacks killing at least 10 Gazans there and in central Gaza’s Deir al-Balah, according to a tally by official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
The Gaza war began with Hamas’s October 7 attack which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory assault on Gaza has killed at least 28,858 people, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.
Even if a temporary truce deal is struck at the talks in Cairo, Netanyahu said his troops’ ground invasion of Rafah will go ahead.
“Even if we achieve it, we will enter Rafah,” he said at a televised news conference Saturday.
Countries urging Israel otherwise are effectively saying “lose the war”, he said.
