TEL AVIV: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Tuesday that the military would launch a ground offensive on Gaza's far-southern Rafah city "with or without" a truce deal being negotiated.
The premier issued the warning despite strong concerns raised by top ally Washington and before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was set to arrive in Israel on his latest Middle East crisis tour.
"The idea that we will halt the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question," said Netanyahu, who was vowed to destroy Palestinian groups over their October 7 attack that sparked the deadliest ever Gaza war.
"We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the battalions there with or without a deal, in order to achieve the total victory," he told families of some of the captives still being held in Gaza, his office said.
Netanyahu's comments came as Palestinian movement Hamas was weighing the latest plan for a truce proposed in Cairo talks with US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators that had raised cautious hopes for an end to the fighting.
The Palestinian group said it was considering a plan for a 40-day ceasefire and the exchange of scores of captives for larger numbers of Palestinian prisoners.
The group, whose envoys returned from Cairo talks to their base in Qatar, would "discuss the ideas and the proposal", said a source, adding that "we are keen to respond as quickly as possible".
Sources in Egypt earlier told Al-Qahera News, a site linked to Egyptian intelligence services, that Hamas envoys were due to "return with a written response".
An Israeli official said that the government "will wait for answers until Wednesday night", and then "make a decision" whether to send negotiators to Cairo.
As diplomacy continued, Israel kept up its bombardment that has flattened swathes of Gaza. A correspondent reported several air strikes in Gaza City, Khan Yunis and Rafah as well as overnight artillery shelling. Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,535 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Palestinian territory.
As the Gaza war has roiled the region and its human toll has sparked international outrage, political momentum has built in the search for a post-war solution to the wider Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan said that irreversible steps towards establishing a Palestinian state would be an essential component of any lasting ceasefire. — AFP
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