Palestinian militant group Hamas is pushing for implementing a Gaza cease-fire plan previously backed by the United Nations Security Council rather than holding further rounds of talks for a fresh pact, ahead of a meeting on Thursday proposed by negotiators.
In a statement on Telegram, Hamas said it wanted a deal based on United States President Joe Biden's May 31 cease-fire proposal, the framework for which was laid out by mediators Qatar and Egypt on May 6, and adopted by the UN Security Council Resolution 2735, Al Jazeera reported on Sunday.
The mediators should enforce the deal on Israel instead of pursuing further rounds of negotiations or new proposals as the process prolongs the killing of Palestinian civilians, Hamas said in the statement, as Israel continues its deadly airstrikes on Gaza.
Jawaid Iqbal, chairman of the Department of West Asian and North African Studies at Aligarh Muslim University in India, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wants to eliminate Hamas, instead of negotiating a cease-fire with it.
Netanyahu had been firm on his position of destroying Hamas and getting all hostages being held by the group, Iqbal said.
Gaza officials told Agence France-Presse on Monday that they had identified 75 of 93 Palestinians killed in an Israeli airstrike on a school building in Gaza, while Israel's military said the weekend raid had "eliminated" 31 militants.
Iqbal said Israel "uses the smokescreen of endless negotiations to continue the war".
"The recent Tabeen school massacre demonstrates this opposition to cease-fire," he said.
Israel Defense Forces spokesman Daniel Hagari said in a video published on IDF's X account that they took numerous steps to mitigate the risk to civilians after receiving "clear intelligence" of the threat posed by "terrorists".
'Precision strike'
The IDF conducted a precision strike on one specific building where, according to their intelligence, no women and children were present, he said.
Hagari blamed Hamas for abusing civilians and civilian infrastructure to attack Israel. These include underground tunnels that run under towns, hospitals, schools, mosques and UN facilities, he said.
However, Hassan Ben Imran, a board member at nonprofit Law for Palestine, told China Daily that Israel's bombing of schools is claiming the lives of "mostly children, with no military targets".
"What Israel announced is complete nonsense; even the 'targets' they used to justify the bombing with are actually not legal targets," he said.
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East, said on X that just in the past few days, more than 75,000 people have been displaced in southwest Gaza.
The International Committee of the Red Cross made a call on X to make the Geneva Conventions a political priority.
"Seize every chance to de-escalate," said Mirjana Spoljaric, president of ICRC, on the 75th anniversary of the Geneva Conventions on Monday.
"The faithful application of international humanitarian law can bolster peace initiatives. We must reduce suffering and protect humanity from further destruction."
Meanwhile, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered a guided missile submarine to the Middle East and is asking the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to sail more quickly to the area, the Pentagon said on Sunday, as mounting tensions raise fears of a region-wide conflict.
Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said Austin, who spoke with his Israeli counterpart Yoav Gallant on Sunday, had also ordered the USS Georgia guided missile submarine to the area.
The US military had already said it will deploy additional fighter jets and navy warships to the Middle East as Washington seeks to bolster Israeli defenses.
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