Hamas official Osama Hamdan warns that if Israel’s military operation continues in Rafah, there will be no ceasefire deal.
Hamdan’s comments are made during a press conference in Beirut as a delegation from Hamas, the terror group that runs the Gaza Strip, arrived in Cairo from Doha to continue ceasefire negotiations, a statement from the group says.
“We affirm that the military operation in Rafah, if carried out by Israel, will not be a picnic for the [Israeli] army,” Hamdan says.
“The ball is in Netanyahu’s court,” he adds, saying that the latest ceasefire proposal that Hamas floated “represents the minimum that responds to the demands of our people and our resistance.”
Israeli forces seized the main border crossing between Egypt and southern Gaza earlier today, in what Israel and the US say is a limited offensive rather than a full-out offensive on the city.
“The Rafah Crossing was and will remain a purely Egyptian-Palestinian crossing,” Hamdan says, amid reports that Israel’s goal is to remove Hamas’s control of the crossing to prevent smuggling of arms and other goods.
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