The Israeli military has issued what it said was its final warning for Gaza City residents to flee as it intensified its bombardment and offensive on Wednesday, while Hamas was reportedly considering requesting amendments to Donald Trump’s ceasefire ultimatum.
Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, said the warning was the last opportunity for people to move to southern Gaza as the military encircled the city. Gaza’s civil defence agency said on Wednesday that Israeli forces had killed at least 46 people, including 36 in Gaza City.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) announced that the intensification of the Israeli assault had forced it to suspend operations in Gaza City.
Katz said: “This is the last opportunity for Gaza residents who wish to do so to move south and leave Hamas operatives isolated in Gaza City.” Those who remained “will be considered terrorists and terrorist supporters”, he said.
International humanitarian law experts have said evacuation orders amount to forced displacement and that civilians who remain in evacuated areas do not lose their protected status under international law.
The Israeli military earlier announced the closure of the last remaining route for residents in southern Gaza to move north, in effect cleaving Gaza in two. Residents in the north could still move southwards along the coastal route to flee Israel’s offensive, the military said.
Hamas is reportedly considering requesting amendments to Trump’s Gaza plan, which demands that Hamas disarm and disqualifies it from any governing role in Gaza. Trump said on Tuesday that the group would “pay in hell” if it rejected the plan.
According to a Palestinian source close to the group who spoke to Agence France-Presse, the group could ask for changes to clauses related to disarmament and the expulsion of Hamas and its allies from Gaza. The group also wants international guarantees that Israel fully withdraws from Gaza and that no assassination attempts will be made on Hamas’s leadership.
Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, said on Wednesday that elements of the Trump plan required further negotiation, a sentiment that Qatar had expressed a day earlier.
It is unclear how the US and Israel would respond to a qualified response to the deal given the bevy of threats levelled at Hamas in recent days.
Trump’s 20-point plan also stipulates that the group must release the remaining 48 hostages it holds within 72 hours of a ceasefire coming into effect, while the Israeli military would return nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and gradually withdraw its troops to a buffer zone at the edge of the Gaza Strip. The cessation in fighting would be accompanied by a surge in humanitarian aid and reconstruction in Gaza.
The plan does not outline a path to a Palestinian state, a demand of Hamas and the wider Arab world.
Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video after Trump announced his plan that the Israeli military would stay in most of Gaza, contrary to the plan’s public terms.
The Trump plan has put Hamas in a corner, demanding of it an almost unconditional surrender to stop Israel’s offensive. Hamas refused several elements of the plan, including disarmament and the continued presence of Israeli troops, in previous rounds of negotiations. The group has yet to comment publicly on the Trump proposal beyond saying it is studying the terms.
Two militant groups allied with Hamas in Gaza have rejected the Trump proposal, arguing that it would hand Israel virtual control over the strip.
Surrendering Hamas’s arms and allowing the presence of international troops and possibly Israeli troops in Gaza would probably spell an end to the group’s significance in Palestinian politics.
In the past, ceasefire proposals have been studied and discussed among Hamas’s leadership primarily in Doha, where most of the group’s senior officials live.
Similarly, the current Trump plan will be debated in Doha, where Egyptian and Qatari mediators are to be joined by Turkey’s head of intelligence to discuss the plan, according to Qatar’s foreign ministry. Whether Hamas’s leadership would join the deliberations was unclear, after an Israeli strike on Doha last month aimed to kill the group’s officials.
Hamas is under pressure from international powers who have widely supported Trump’s plan. The Palestinian Authority, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have said they welcomed the plan.
Trump’s is the only ceasefire proposal on the table to end the war in Gaza, where the humanitarian situation declines day by day under Israeli bombardment and aid restrictions.
Two more Palestinians died of starvation in the past 24 hours, bringing the total number of Palestinians who have died from hunger to 455 since the start of the war nearly two years ago.
At least 51 Palestinians were killed in Gaza over the last 24 hours, according to health authorities. Those killed included five people struck by an Israeli tank while gathered by a water tank, as well as others sheltering in a school repurposed to house displaced people in Gaza City.
More than 66,000 Palestinians have been killed and nearly 170,000 wounded during Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, according to the Gaza ministry of health. Israel launched its war on Gaza nearly two years ago after Hamas-led militants killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
