Battles Rage as Chances of Gaza Peace Talks Improve

As Washington reported progress in restarting negotiations, the IDF pressed Hamas throughout Gaza and hit suspected terrorists in the West Bank.

Israel and Hamas are inching closer to resuming Washington-led peace negotiations as fighting intensifies both in Gaza and on the West Bank.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) on July 5 reported it was making military progress against Hamas—the terrorist group controlling Gaza—both in Gaza City near the Gaza Strip’s north end and in Rafah in the south.

The previous day, the White House had announced a breakthrough on talks that had been stalled for weeks.

The IDF said it had eliminated about 100 terrorists in the Shejaiya sector of Gaza City, dismantled more than 100 Hamas infrastructure sites, and located large amounts of weapons.

A terrorist on July 4 launched two missiles toward Kibbutz Nahal Oz but was killed two minutes later in a strike from an Israeli aircraft, the IDF said.

In Rafah, at the opposite end of the Gaza Strip, the IDF eliminated dozens of armed terrorists and dismantled booby-trapped structures.

“Over the past day the IAF [Israeli Air Force] struck over 50 terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip, including booby-trapped structures, armed terrorist cells, and launch posts,” the IDF said.

Included in the air force’s targets were combantants operating from two schools in Gaza City run by the United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA), which aids Palestinians but has been accused by Israel of cooperating with Hamas and allowing the group to siphon off aid for military purposes.

“The schools were used as hideouts for terrorists and as an active operational infrastructure of the Hamas terrorist organization, from which its operatives planned, directed, and carried out numerous attacks against IDF troops operating in Gaza,” the IDF said.

The IDF identified the schools as the Alqahirah School in Al-Furqan and the Musa School in Dara Tuffah.

It said measures were taken to “mitigate harm to uninvolved civilians, including conducting aerial surveillance, using precise munitions, and additional intelligence measures.”

“The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violated international law, exploiting civilian structures and populations as human shields for its terrorist attacks against the state of Israel,” the IDF said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told President Joe Biden on July 4 that he would send a delegation—led by the chief of the Mossad spy agency David Barnea—to resume stalled cease fire negotiations.

Mr. Netanyahu met with his cabinet earlier that day after Hamas responded to a May proposal from President Biden on July 3.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks during a foreign policy discussion at the Brookings Institute in Washington on July 1, 2024. (Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images)

A senior U.S. official told reporters during a call that the breakthrough had overcome a “critical impasse” in Israel’s negotiations with Hamas to release Israeli hostages and move toward a permanent ceasefire.

Hamas has said any deal must end the nearly nine-month war and bring a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Israel has maintained it will accept only temporary pauses in the fighting until Hamas is eradicated.

The fighting across the Gaza Strip shows the IDF involved in combat once more in north and central Gaza, areas it previously said were pacified.

Fighting also intensified on July 5 in the West Bank city of Jenin, including an Israeli air strike. Palestinian authorities said four people were killed.

The clashes in Jenin came a day after an Israeli anti-settlement monitoring group said the government plans to build nearly 5,300 new homes in the West Bank, which many Israelis refer to as Judea and Samaria.

The government has sought to beef up the number of Israeli houses in the area as part of a strategy to cement Israel’s control and prevent a future Palestinian state there.

On July 4, 63 members of Knesset, a majority of the 120-member national parliament, signed a letter to their speaker declaring their opposition to any Palestinian state west of the Jordan River.

Mr. Netanyahu is scheduled to go to Washington later this month.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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