Palestinian resistance group Hamas has accepted a U.N. Security Council cease-fire resolution and is ready to negotiate over the details, a senior Hamas official confirmed Tuesday.
Conversations on plans for Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends will continue on Tuesday afternoon and in the next couple of days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in Tel Aviv after talks with Israeli leaders. "It's imperative that we have these plans."
Blinken met Israeli officials on Tuesday in a push to end the eight-month-old Israeli air and ground war that has devastated Gaza, a day after President Joe Biden's proposal for a truce was approved by the U.N. Security Council.
Ahead of Blinken's trip, Israel and Hamas both repeated hardline positions that have undermined previous mediation to end the fighting, while Tel Aviv has pressed on with brutal assaults in central and southern Gaza.
On Tuesday, however, senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri, who is based outside Gaza, said it accepted the cease-fire resolution and was ready to negotiate over the details. It was up to Washington to ensure that Israel abides by it, he added.
He said Hamas accepted the formula stipulating the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a swap of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel.
"The U.S. administration is facing a real test to carry out its commitments in compelling the occupation to immediately end the war in an implementation of the U.N. Security Council resolution," Abu Zuhri told Reuters.
Blinken said the Hamas statement was "a hopeful sign" but definitive word was still needed from the Hamas leadership inside Israeli-besieged Gaza. "That's what counts, and that's what we don't have yet."
The war was triggered by the Oct. 7 Hamas incursion that caused the death of nearly 1,200 people and seized more than 250 as hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel's genocidal war on Gaza, in comparison, has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, the Gaza Health Ministry has said, and reduced most of the narrow, coastal enclave to wasteland, with malnutrition widespread.
Biden's proposal envisages a cease-fire and release of hostages in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel in stages, ultimately leading to a permanent end to the war.
Israel has said it will agree only to temporary pauses in the war until Hamas is defeated, while Hamas has countered it will not accept a deal that does not guarantee the war will end.
Blinken, speaking to reporters before departing for neighboring Jordan, also said his talks were also addressing day-after plans for Gaza, including security, governance and rebuilding the densely populated enclave.
"We've been doing that in consultation with many partners throughout the region. Those conversations will continue ... it's imperative that we have these plans," he said.
In the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, Palestinians reacted cautiously to the Security Council vote, fearing it could prove yet another cease-fire initiative that would prove fruitless.
"We will believe it only when we see it," said Shaban Abdel-Raouf, 47, a displaced family of five sheltering in the central city of Deir al-Balah, a frequent target of Israeli firepower.
"When they tell us to pack our belongings and prepare to go back to Gaza City, we will know it is true," he told Reuters via a chat app.
In his visit, his eighth to the Middle East since Israel launched its war, Blinken also hoped to counter rising violence between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah after both signaled readiness for a major spillover conflict.
On Monday, Blinken had talks in Cairo with President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, an important mediator in the Gaza war, in Cairo before proceeding to Israel, where he met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.
Blinken had consultations Tuesday with Israeli President Isaac Herzog, centrist ex-military chief Benny Gantz – who quit Israel's war cabinet Sunday over what he said was Netanyahu's failure to outline a plan for the war's end – as well as opposition leader Yair Lapid.
The U.S. State Department said Blinken discussed Biden's truce proposal with Gantz and reiterated that it would advance Israel's security interests, bring hostages home and raise the chances of restoring calm along Israel's border with Lebanon.
The U.S. is Israel's closest ally and biggest arms supplier though it has become sharply critical of the high civilian death toll, vast destruction and the humanitarian crisis in Gaza caused by the disproportionate Israeli military campaign.
The attacks raged on in Gaza on Tuesday as Israeli forces stepped up strikes on its southern city of Rafah a day after four soldiers were killed in an ambush claimed by Hamas.
Israeli Army Radio said the soldiers died in an explosion in a building in Rafah's Shaboura district. Hamas said it had ambushed troops by detonating explosives planted in the building.
