“Following the impasse in the negotiations and at the direction of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David Barnea, head of the Mossad, ordered his team in Doha to return to Israel,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement on Saturday.
The statement accused Hamas of not fulfilling its side of an agreement to extend the truce in Gaza. The deal had included the release of all women and children held in Gaza in accordance with a list conveyed to Hamas and agreed upon, the statement said.
Hours later, Hamas said there will be no further prisoner exchange with Israel until the war on Gaza is over.
“Our official stance is there will be no further prisoner swap until the war ends,” deputy head of the group, Saleh al-Arouri, told Al Jazeera.
“Israeli prisoners will not be released until our [Palestinian] prisoners are liberated and after a ceasefire comes into effect.”
“What we have left of Israeli prisoners are soldiers and civilians serving in the army,” he added.The Hamas official said the group was ready to exchanges the “bodies of dead Israelis in exchange for our own martyrs, but we need time to exhume these bodies”.
“The Israeli occupation insists that we are still holding women and children but we have already released them all,” he said.
Reporting from Doha, Al Jazeera’s Ali Hashem said: “Given the fact that the demands now are changing, the Israelis are demanding that Hamas should release women soldiers.”
“To Hamas, that has a different price,” he said, referring to the previous agreement of three Palestinians prisoners released for every captive held in Gaza under the weeklong truce that ended early on Friday. “The main issue is also that Hamas was from the beginning offering all for all – the Israeli captives for all the Palestinian prisoners in Israel.
“Now, we are facing this deadlock with the Israelis withdrawing. This doesn’t mean that negotiations are coming to an end. There may be another mediation and new ideas from different parties,” he said.
The temporary truce between Israel and Hamas collapsed after mediators were unable to extend it. The humanitarian pause saw the release of 80 Israeli captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners.Israel and Hamas have traded blame over the truce’s collapse.
Meanwhile, French President Emmanuel Macron said France is “very concerned” by the resumption of violence in Gaza as he landed in Qatar on Saturday to help kick-start a new truce.
Macron said at a press conference at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai that the situation required the doubling-down of efforts to obtain a lasting ceasefire and the freeing of all captives.He also urged Israel to clarify its goals towards Hamas.
“We are at a moment when Israeli authorities must more precisely define their objectives and their final goal: the total destruction of Hamas – does anyone think it is possible? If this is the case, the war will last 10 years,” he said.
“There is no lasting security for Israel in the region if its security is achieved at the cost of Palestinian lives and thus of the resentment of public opinion in the region. Let’s be collectively lucid,” Macron added.
People chant slogans holding banners that reads « Long live the resistance of the Palestinian people" during a pro-Palestinian rally, in Paris, Saturday, Dec. 2
People chant slogans at a pro-Palestinian rally in Paris on Saturday [Thomas Padilla/AP]
Asked for a response to those remarks, Mark Regev, senior adviser to Netanyahu, told reporters Israel does not want to see Gaza civilians caught in the crossfire as battles resume.
“Israel is targeting Hamas, a brutal terrorist organisation that has committed the most horrific violence against innocent civilians. Israel is making a maximum effort to safeguard Gaza’s civilians,” Regev said.
But the civilian death toll continues to mount in the enclave.
At least 100 Palestinians were killed by Israeli air strikes on the Jabalia refugee camp in the north of the strip on Saturday. Rescuers used their bare hands to dig through rubble in search of survivors.
Palestinian authorities said at least 240 people have been killed since the bombings resumed early on Friday.
Fadel Naim, chief doctor at al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza City, said his morgue has received 30 bodies since Saturday morning, including seven children.
“The planes bombed our houses. Three bombs, three houses destroyed,” Nemr al-Bel, 43, told the Agence France-Presse news agency, adding that he had counted 10 dead in his family and “13 more still under the rubble”.
The United Nations estimated at least 1.7 million people in Gaza – 80 percent of its population – have been displaced since the war began on October 7.
Since then, the Israeli campaign in Gaza has killed more than 15,000 people, most of them civilians. In Israel, the official death toll stands at about 1,200.
Israel pounded targets in crowded southern Gaza on Saturday and ordered more neighborhoods designated for attack to evacuate, driving up the death toll even as the United States and others urged it to do more to protect civilians a day after a truce collapsed.
The prospect of further cease-fires in Gaza appeared bleak, as Israel recalled its negotiators and Hamas’ deputy leader said any further swap of Gaza-held hostages for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel would only happen as part of ending the war.
“We will continue the war until we achieve all its goals, and it’s impossible to achieve those goals without the ground operation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an address Saturday night.
At least 200 Palestinians have been killed since the fighting resumed Friday morning following the weeklong truce with the territory’s ruling militant group Hamas, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza. Several multi-story residential buildings were hit on Saturday, engulfing neighborhoods in huge clouds of smoke.
Separately, the ministry said the overall death toll in Gaza since the Oct. 7 start of the war had surpassed 15,200, a sharp jump from the previous count of more than 13,300 on Nov. 20. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants, but it said 70 percent of the dead were women and children. It said more than 40,000 people had been wounded since the war began.
“Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating,” US Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters during the the COP28 climate conference in Dubai.
Appeals from the US, Israel’s closest ally, to protect civilians came after an offensive in the first weeks of the war devastated large areas of northern Gaza. Some 2 million Palestinians, almost Gaza’s entire population, are now crammed into the territory’s southern half.
Israel’s military said it had hit more than 400 Hamas targets across Gaza over the past day, including over 50 in Khan Younis city and surrounding areas in the south.
Palestinian Red Crescent spokesman Mahmoud Basal told broadcaster Al-Jazeera that there were more than 300 “martyrs” in Gaza City’s Shujaia neighborhood and that homes were flattened. Israel’s military said it killed Hamas’ Shujaia battalion commander but gave no details on the operation. Residents could not be reached.
In northern Gaza, an airstrike flattened a building hosting families in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya on Gaza City’s outskirts. It left dozens dead or wounded, said residents Hamza Obeid and Amal Radwan.
“The building turned into a pile of rubble,” Obeid said. AP video showed smoke rising as men, some in sandals, picked their way over debris. The Israeli military confirmed it was operating in Jabaliya and said it had found and destroyed Hamas tunnels in the surrounding area.
And a powerful strike hit a cluster of multi-story buildings in Hamad City, a Qatari-funded housing development on the outskirts of Khan Younis. Smoke engulfed the complex. There was no immediate word on casualties.
“Where is it safe? I swear to God, no one knows, where are we going?” asked Zohair al Raai, who said his family received a recorded message saying their building should evacuate.
Also in the south, at least nine people, including three children, were killed in a strike on a house in Deir Al-Balah, according to the hospital where bodies were taken.
Meanwhile, Palestinian militant groups in Gaza said they fired a barrage of rockets on southern Israel. Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, an Israeli army spokesperson, said Hamas had launched more than 250 since the cease-fire ended. There were no immediate reports injuries.
During a Saturday visit to Israel and the West Bank city of Ramallah, an International Criminal Court prosecutor said his office is serious in moving forward to investigate allegations of war crimes on both sides.
“Every actor should be without doubts that they must comply with the law now,” Karim Khan told broadcaster Palestine TV. “And if you don’t comply with the law now, don’t complain later, because we are serious.”
With the resumption of fighting, the Israeli military published an online map carving up Gaza into hundreds of numbered parcels and asked residents to familiarize themselves with the number of their location ahead of evacuation warnings.
On Saturday, the military listed more than two dozen parcel numbers around Gaza City and east of Khan Younis. Separately, it dropped leaflets with evacuation orders over towns east of Khan Younis.
One Khan Younis resident said a neighbor received a call from the Israeli army warning that houses in the area would be hit. “We told them, ‘We have nothing here, why do you want to strike it?’” said the resident, Hikmat Al-Qidra. Al-Qidra said the house was destroyed.
The maps and leaflets generated panic and confusion, especially in the crowded south. Unable to go to northern Gaza or neighboring Egypt, their only escape is to move around within the 220-square-kilometer (85-square-mile) area.
“There is no place to go,” said Emad Hajjar, who fled to Khan Younis a month ago. “They expelled us from the north, and now they are pushing us to leave the south.”
Mark Regev, a senior adviser to Netanyahu, said Israel was making “maximum effort” to protect civilians and the military has used leafleting, phone calls, and radio and TV broadcasts to urge Gazans to move from specific areas.
Regev added that Israel is considering a future security buffer zone that would not allow Gazans direct access to the border fence on foot.
Israel says it targets Hamas operatives and blames civilian casualties on the militants, accusing them of operating in residential neighborhoods. It claims to have killed thousands of militants, without providing evidence. Israel says 77 of its soldiers have been killed in the offensive in northern Gaza.
Also Saturday, the Palestinian Red Crescent said it had received the first convoy of aid trucks through the Rafah crossing with Egypt since fighting resumed. Wael Abu Omar, a spokesman for the Palestinian Crossings Authority, said 100 trucks entered including three carrying 150,000 liters (nearly 40,000 gallons) of fuel.
Meanwhile the US vice president said in a meeting with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi that “under no circumstances” would the United States permit the forced relocation of Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank, an ongoing siege of Gaza or redrawing of its borders, according to a US summary.
The Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in southern Israel. Around 240 people were taken captive.
The renewed hostilities have heightened concerns for 137 hostages who, according to the Israeli military, are still held after 105 were freed during the truce. A 70-year-old woman held by Hamas was declared dead on Saturday, according to her kibbutz, bringing the number of known dead hostages to eight.
At a rally of tens of thousands in Tel Aviv, released hostages called for the rest to be freed. In a video address, Yaffa Adar, 85, spoke up specifically for children being held, saying, “I want to see them now — not when I’m in a coffin.”
Hamas and Israel differed on who was still being held.
Hamas’ deputy leader, Saleh Arouri, told Al-Jazeera that any remaining hostages are men, “all of whom served in the (Israeli) army.” That contradicted another top Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, who told The Associated Press on Friday the group was willing to trade more hostages but rebuffed an Israeli demand to release 10 female soldiers.
Israel’s Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas violated the truce agreement by refusing to return two children and 15 women.
During the truce, Israel freed 240 Palestinians. Most of those released by both sides were women and children.