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GAZA: Hamas said on Saturday that it would not disarm unless an independent Palestinian state is established — a fresh rebuke to a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.

Indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel aimed at securing a 60-day ceasefire in the Gaza war and deal for the release of hostages ended last week in deadlock.

On Tuesday, Qatar and Egypt, who are mediating ceasefire efforts, endorsed a declaration by France and �������� outlining steps toward a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and saying that as part of this Hamas must hand over its arms to the Western-backed Palestinian Authority.

In its statement, Hamas — which has dominated Gaza since 2007 but has been militarily battered by Israel in the war — said it could not yield its right to “armed resistance” unless an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is established.

Israel considers the disarmament of Hamas a key condition for any deal to end the conflict, but Hamas has repeatedly said it is not willing to lay down its weaponry.

Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described any future independent Palestinian state as a platform to destroy Israel and said, for that reason, security control over Palestinian territories must remain with Israel.

He also criticized several countries, including the UK and Canada, for announcing plans to recognize a Palestinian state in response to devastation of Gaza from Israel’s offensive and blockade, calling the move a reward for Hamas’ conduct.

The war started when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel on October 7, 2023, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Israel’s subsequent military assault on Gaza has turned much of the enclave into a wasteland, killed over 60,000 Palestinians and set off a humanitarian catastrophe.

Israel and Hamas traded blame after the most recent round of talks ended in an impasse, with gaps lingering over issues including the extent of an Israeli military withdrawal.

TEL AVIV: US envoy Steve Witkoff on Saturday met the anguished families of Israeli hostages still held in Gaza, as fears for the captives’ survival mounted almost 22 months into the war sparked by Hamas’s October 2023 attack.

Witkoff was greeted with some applause and pleas for assistance from hundreds of protesters gathered in Tel Aviv, before going into a closed meeting with the families.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum confirmed the meeting was underway and videos shared online showed Witkoff arriving as families chanted “Bring them home!” and “We need your help.”

The visit came one day after Witkoff visited a US-backed aid station in Gaza, to inspect efforts to get food into the devastated Palestinian territory.

Yotam Cohen, brother of 21-year-old hostage Nimrod Cohen, told AFP in the square: “The war needs to end. The Israeli government will not end it willingly. It has refused to do so.

“The Israeli government must be stopped. For our sakes, for our soldiers’ sakes, for our hostages’ sakes, for our sons and for the future generations of everybody in the Middle East.”

After the meeting, the Forum released a statement saying that Witkoff had given them a personal commitment that he and US President Donald Trump would work to return the remaining hostages.

The United States, along with Egypt and Qatar, had been mediating ceasefire talks between Hamas and Israel that would allow the hostages to be released and humanitarian aid to flow more freely.

But talks broke down last month and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is under increasing domestic pressure to come up with another way to secure the missing hostages, alive and dead.

He is also facing international calls to open Gaza’s borders to more food aid, after UN and humanitarian agencies warned that more than two million Palestinian civilians are facing starvation.

But Israel’s top general warned that there would be no respite in fighting in Gaza if the hostages were not released.

“I estimate that in the coming days we will know whether we can reach an agreement for the release of our hostages,” said army chief of staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, according to a military statement.

“If not, the combat will continue without rest,” he said, during remarks to officers inside Gaza on Friday.

Of the 251 people who were kidnapped from Israel during Hamas’s attack in October 2023, 49 remain in Gaza, 27 of them dead, according to the military.

Palestinian armed groups this week released two videos of hostages looking emaciated and weak.

Zamir denied that there was widespread starvation in Gaza.

“The current campaign of false accusations of intentional starvation is a deliberate, timed, and deceitful attempt to accuse the IDF (Israeli military), a moral army, of war crimes,” he said.

“The ones responsible for the killing and suffering of the residents in the Gaza Strip is Hamas.”

Hamas’s 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to a tally based on official figures.

A total of 898 Israeli soldiers have also been killed, according to the military.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed at least 60,332 people, mostly civilians, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, deemed reliable by the UN.

Gaza’s civil defense agency said Israeli strikes killed 21 people in the territory on Saturday.

Civil defense spokesman Mahmud Bassal said two people were killed and another 26 injured after an Israeli strike on a central Gaza area where Palestinians had gathered before a food distribution point run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

He added that Saturday’s bombings mostly targeted the areas near the southern city of Khan Yunis and Gaza City in the north.

Witkoff visited another GHF site for five hours on Friday, promising that Trump would come up with a plan to better feed civilians.

Adnan Abu Hasna, of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, told AFP that the agency had “approximately 6,000 trucks ready for the Gaza Strip, but the crossings are closed by political decision. There are five land crossings into the Strip through which 1,000 trucks can enter daily.”

The UN human rights office in the Palestinian territories on Friday said at least 1,373 Palestinians seeking aid in Gaza had been killed since May 27, most of them by the Israeli military.

Israel’s military insist that soldiers never deliberately target civilians and accuses Hamas fighters of looting UN and humanitarian aid trucks.