Israel kills top Palestinian militant as Gaza truce talks stumble

SIDON,  Lebanon – The Israeli military killed a senior Palestinian militant in a strike Wednesday on Lebanon, leading to accusations from the Fatah movement that Israel was trying to ignite a regional war.

The strike that killed Khalil Maqdah, described by Fatah as “one of the leaders” of its armed wing in Lebanon, came hours after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended a tour of the Middle East aimed at reaching a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

On Wednesday, US President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss “the ceasefire and hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions,” the White House said.

Fatah, which is based in the Israeli-occupied West Bank and rivals the Gaza Strip’s Islamist rulers Hamas, said Maqdah was killed near the southern Lebanese city of Sidon.

Israel accused him of “directing attacks and smuggling weapons” to the West Bank and collaborating with Iranian forces.

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His killing marked the first time Israel has targeted a senior Fatah member in more than 10 months of cross-border clashes with Lebanese militants, mostly from Hezbollah, during the Gaza war.

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Tawfiq Tirawy, a member of Fatah’s central committee, told AFP that the “assassination… is further proof that Israel wants to ignite a full-scale war in the region”.

Blinken, who left Qatar late Tuesday apparently empty-handed, appealed to Hamas to urgently accept a US-drafted truce proposal, while also publicly disagreeing with Israel over its future presence in the besieged Gaza Strip.

“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said before flying out of Doha after stops in Egypt and Israel.

A ceasefire “needs to get done, and it needs to get done in the days ahead,” he said.

Father mourns

On the ground, Gaza was again rocked by air strikes, according to AFP reporters, first responders, witnesses and the Israeli military, which also issued fresh evacuation orders.

The civil defence agency in the Hamas-run territory said at least three people were killed and 10 children wounded in an Israeli strike on a school-turned-shelter in Gaza City.

Israel’s military said the “precise strike” targeted Hamas militants based in the school compound.

A father told AFP his child was killed in the strike while playing in the schoolyard.

“What did this child do to deserve this?” he said, declining to give his name.

Israeli bombardment elsewhere in Gaza killed at least 24 people on Wednesday, the civil defense agency said.

Israel and Hamas have blamed each other for delays in agreeing a deal to end fighting, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack, as well as freeing Israeli hostages and allowing vital humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The United States has presented ideas to bridge gaps and, through mediators Qatar and Egypt, pressed Hamas to return to talks this week in Cairo.

But a day after Blinken said US ally Israel was on board, Netanyahu was quoted by Israeli media as disagreeing on a key sticking point.

Netanyahu insisted Israel maintain control of the Philadelphi Corridor, the border between Gaza and Egypt that Israeli forces seized from Hamas, which Israel says relies on tunnels to bring in weapons.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant toured Philpadelphi on Wednesday, his office said.

Since the war began, it was made “very clear that the United States does not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel”, Blinken said when asked about Netanyahu’s remarks.

But he added that Israel had already agreed on the “schedule and location” of troop withdrawals from Gaza in the talks. Details have not been made public.

Hamas said it was “keen to reach a ceasefire” but protested “new conditions” from Israel in the latest US proposal.

‘Bring them all back’

The October 7 attack on southern Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory military campaign has killed 40,223 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, which does not give details of civilian and militant deaths. The UN rights office says most dead are women and children.

Palestinian militants also seized 251 hostages, of whom 105 remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.

The military’s latest evacuation orders, including for parts of central and southern Gaza previously designated “safe” by Israel, affect some 150,000 displaced Palestinians who had sought shelter there, the United Nations’ humanitarian agency OCHA said.

“Today’s orders have also made three water wells… inaccessible. Those wells serve tens of thousands of people,” it said.

A UN official said death “seems to be the only certainty” for Gaza’s 2.4 million people, with no way to escape Israel’s bombardment.

“Absolutely nowhere is safe,” Louise Wateridge, a spokeswoman for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA), told AFP from Gaza.

In Lebanon, Hamas ally Hezbollah claimed attacks on Israeli military positions across the border including in the annexed Golan Heights, after several Israeli strikes that the health ministry said had killed five people.

Fears of a wider regional conflagration soared after the late July killings, blamed on Israel, of Iran-aligned militant leaders in Tehran and in Beirut.

Netanyahu, at an airbase in northern Israel, said “we are ready for any scenario.”

Mourners meanwhile gathered in southern Israel to bury one of six dead hostages recovered from Gaza by Israeli forces this week.

Yagev Buchshtab’s mother Esther, echoing calls for Netanyahu to secure a hostage release deal, said: “In what world must families beg, scream and cry for the return of their loved ones, alive or murdered? Bring them all back.”

Agence France-Presse

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