GAZA STRIP, Palestinian Territories, May  3, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - A top Hamas
official accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday of trying
to derail a proposed Gaza truce and hostage release deal with his threats to
keep fighting the Palestinian militant group.

       "Netanyahu was the obstructionist of all previous rounds of dialogue... and
it is clear that he still is," senior Hamas official Hossam Badran told AFP by
telephone.

       Foreign mediators have waited for a Hamas response to a proposal to halt
the fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners, which
its chief Ismail Haniyeh has said the group was considering in a "positive
spirit".

       A major stumbling block has been that, while Hamas has demanded a lasting
ceasefire, Netanyahu has vowed to crush its remaining fighters in the
far-southern city of Rafah, which is packed with displaced civilians.

       The hawkish prime minister has insisted that he will send ground troops
into Rafah, despite strong concerns voiced by ally Washington for the safety of
the 1.2 million people sheltering in the city hard by the Egyptian border.

       Badran charged that Netanyahu's insistence on attacking Rafah was
calculated to "thwart any possibility of concluding an agreement" in the
negotiations brokered by Egyptian, Qatari and US mediators.

       The Gaza war raged on unabated and Israeli air strikes killed several more
people in Rafah overnight, Palestinian medics and the civil defence agency said.
       One bereaved resident, Sanaa Zoorob, said her sister and six of her nieces
and nephews were killed.

       Two of the children "were found in pieces in their mother's embrace,"
Zoorob said, appealing for "a permanent ceasefire and a full withdrawal from
Gaza".

       
       - Wave of campus protests -
       
       The war broke out after Hamas's October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the
deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally
of Israeli official figures.

       The militants also took some 250 hostages, of whom Israel estimates 128
remain in Gaza.

       The army says 35 of them are dead, including 49-year-old Dror Or, a
resident from the badly-hit kibbutz Beeri, whose death was confirmed by
authorities on Friday.

       Israel's devastating retaliatory campaign has killed at least 34,622 people
in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory's
health ministry.

       Sustained bombardment has devastated the Gaza Strip, which the United
Nations says will require a decades-long reconstruction effort on a scale not
seen since World War II.

       Israel has weathered an international backlash over the spiralling death
toll and the suffering caused by months of siege.

       Student protests have flared for weeks at about 40 US universities and
colleges on a scale not seen since the Vietnam war protests of the 1960s and
70s, some spiralling into clashes with police and mass arrests.

       Pro-Palestinian rallies have also swept campuses in Britain, France,
Mexico, Australia and elsewhere.

       US President Joe Biden -- a strong supporter of Israel who has also urged
Netanyahu to take greater steps to protect Palestinian civilians -- insisted
that "order must prevail" on campuses.

       "There's the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos," the
81-year-old president said.

       Turkey announced on Thursday that it was suspending all trade with Israel.
       President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the move was intended to "force Israel
to agree to a ceasefire and increase the amount of humanitarian aid to enter"
Gaza.

       
       - Famine threat remains -
    
       
       Netanyahu faces regular protests demanding a deal to bring home the
hostages, but also difficult political realities to stay in power.

       He leads a fragile coalition with far-right and religious parties, some of
whom have threatened to bring down the government if the army doesn't enter
Rafah.

       Demonstrators accuse Netanyahu, who is on trial on corruption charges which
he denies, of seeking to prolong the war.

       Since the conflict erupted, an Israeli siege has further battered Gaza and
pushed many of its 2.4 million people to the brink of famine.

       US pressure has prompted Israel to enable more aid deliveries to Gaza,
including through the reopened Erez crossing that leads directly into the
worst-hit north.

       Food availability has improved "a little bit", said the World Health
Organization's representative in the Palestinian territories, Rik Peeperkorn.

       But he warned that the threat of famine had "absolutely not" gone away.

       The US-based charity World Central Kitchen has also resumed operations this
week, after suspending them  in the immediate aftermath of Israeli drone
strikes that killed seven of its workers as they unloaded aid in Gaza on April
1.

       The group's kitchen manager Zakria Yahya Abukuwaik, preparing food in
Rafah, said that "we realised after the kitchen closed that many mouths were
left hungry".

       World Central Kitchen was involved in an effort earlier this year to
establish a new maritime aid corridor to Gaza from  Cyprus to help compensate
for dwindling deliveries by land from Israel.

       The project suffered a new blow when the US military announced that bad
weather had forced troops working to assemble a temporary aid pier off the Gaza
coast to relocate their work to the Israeli port of Ashdod.

       "Forecasted high winds and high sea swells caused unsafe conditions for
soldiers working on the surface of the partially constructed pier," US Central
Command said in a statement.

       "The partially built pier and military vessels involved in its construction
have moved to the Port of Ashdod, where assembly will continue, and will be
completed prior to the emplacement of the pier in its intended location when
sea states subside."