Haniyeh: Israeli Assault Jeopardizes Peace Talks

Hamas's Doha-based leader Ismail Haniyeh says the Israeli army's actions, including its assault on the southern Gazan city of Rafah, have "made the fate of the negotiations, in their entirety, unknown".

"The enemy's stagnation, its repeated attempts to undermine the position of the resistance factions, its refusal to deal with the flexible approach adopted by the movement in the past months, its insistence on going ahead with its occupation of the Rafah crossing and expanding the fighting to Rafah and other areas have all made the fate of the negotiations, in their entirety" Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas leader said.

Haniyeh's comments come after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted there was no "humanitarian catastrophe" in Rafah.

It came as Palestinians commemorated the 76th anniversary of the "Nakba", when around 760,000 Palestinians fled or were driven from their homes during the 1948 wartime creation of Israel.

Israeli forces have battled and bombed Hamas militants in and around Gaza's far-southern city of Rafah, but clashes have also flared again in northern and central areas which Israeli troops first entered months ago.

The upsurge in urban combat in besieged Gaza has fuelled US warnings that Israel risks being bogged down in a counterinsurgency operation for years.

But despite previous threats by US President Joe Biden to withhold some arms deliveries over Netanyahu's insistence on attacking Rafah, his administration informed Congress of a new $1 billion weapons package for Israel, official sources said.

The European Union urged Israel to end its military operation in Rafah "immediately", warning failure to do so would "inevitably put a heavy strain" on ties with the bloc.

But even as he announced that hundreds of thousands had been "evacuated", Netanyahu insisted there was no humanitarian crisis in Rafah.