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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had accepted a “bridging proposal” put forward by mediators trying to broker a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
A spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu confirmed the prime minister had told Blinken that Israel had agreed to the bridging proposal, which American, Egyptian and Qatari officials presented last week in a gambit to find a formula that might stop the fighting and avert a wider regional war. The proposal is intended close the remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas on several critical issues after months of impasse.
Hamas officials did not immediately comment, but its officials have called the mediators’ proposal fundamentally slanted toward Israel. While the framework’s details have not been publicized, Hamas said in a statement on Sunday that it closely aligned with Israel’s demands.
Mr. Blinken’s comments came after he met for three hours with Mr. Netanyahu in Jerusalem. “In a very constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu today he confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal — that he supports it,” Mr. Blinken said at a news conference. “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same.”
Earlier the prime minister’s office said in a statement that the meeting with Mr. Blinken had been “positive,” and that the Israeli leader had reaffirmed his commitment to “the current American proposal on the release of our hostages.”
In a later statement, Mr. Netanyahu described the meetings with Mr. Blinken as good and important. “I also greatly appreciate the understanding that the U.S. has shown for our vital security interests as part of our joint efforts to bring about the release of our hostages,” he said.
Talks that ended in Qatar on Friday and were expected to resume this week in Egypt, representing “probably the best, maybe the last, opportunity to get the hostages home, to get a cease-fire, and to put everyone on a better path to enduring peace and security,” Mr. Blinken said before meeting with the Israeli prime minister.
American negotiators believe the latest proposal addresses the two sides’ concerns about implementing terms of the deal, and Mr. Blinken returned to the region to press parties to get across the finish line, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations.
At the same time, hostilities between the two sides have not ebbed. Hamas’s military wing and an ally, Islamic Jihad, on Monday claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv the night before that had injured one person. And the Israeli military said it had carried out strikes across central and southern Gaza over the past day that had killed dozens of militants.
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The cease-fire talks have taken on added importance, given regional tensions involving Israel, Iran and one of its proxies, the Hezbollah militants based in Lebanon. Both Iran and Hezbollah have threatened to strike Israel over the assassinations of militant leaders in Lebanon and Tehran, raising the prospect of a much broader conflict.
Diplomats hope that if the fighting is brought to a halt in Gaza, it might tamp down tensions overall. Senior negotiators were hoping to resume the cease-fire talks in Egypt by the end of the week. Mr. Blinken will travel to Egypt from Israel, in his ninth visit to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began.
Since Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants poured across the border from the Gaza Strip, killing about 1,200 people and seizing hostages, the United States has given Israel its near unstinting support, both military and diplomatic.
But as the humanitarian crisis has grown in Gaza, where health officials say some 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, so have tensions between Israel and the United States, its closest ally. The Biden administration has redoubled its efforts to persuade the Netanyahu government to agree to a deal.
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting.
— Robert Jimison traveling with Secretary Blinken in Tel Aviv
Key Developments
Hamas’s military wing and Islamic Jihad took responsibility for what they said was a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv late Sunday, and threatened further attacks because of “continued civilian displacement and killings” of Palestinians. The Israeli police and the Shin Bet security agency said in a statement that a “powerful explosive” had detonated on Lechi Road in southern Tel Aviv. One passerby was moderately injured, the statement said, describing it as a terrorist attack. The statement said that authorities were investigating but made no mention of a suicide attack.
Israeli military operations in central and southern Gaza have killed at least 25 people since Sunday, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense. The Israeli military said on Monday that it had killed dozens of “terrorists” in those areas, struck Hamas facilities in central Gaza and dismantled militants’ infrastructure above and below ground in the southern part of the territory. The military also said that it had struck and killed a Hamas fighter who launched projectiles from southern Gaza toward Israel. The Israeli forces’ accounts could not be independently verified.
Israeli forces on Sunday killed another Palestinian journalist, Ibrahim Muhareb, according to the International Federation of Journalists, bringing the total number of Palestinian journalists and news media workers killed since Oct. 7 to at least 123, the federation said. The Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate said that Mr. Muhareb, a freelancer, was killed and another journalist was hit with shrapnel and hospitalized after Israeli tank fire targeted Mr. Muhareb and a group of his colleagues near the city of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. The group was wearing gear identifying them as journalists. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the attack.
• More than half of all aid workers killed around the world in 2023 were slain during the first three months of the war in Gaza, the United Nations’ humanitarian office said on Monday. Those killings, largely from airstrikes, turned 2023 into the deadliest year on record for aid workers, the office said in a statement commemorating World Humanitarian Day. UNRWA, the U.N. agency that is the largest aid group on the ground in Gaza, said that 207 of its workers had been killed since the war began.
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Hala Khattab’s home in the city of Deir al-Balah in Gaza had been full of children — six of them. There was her oldest son, Hussein, 15; her 9-year-od quadruplets, Kinan, Hamman, Lujain and Sibal; and her baby girl, Wakeen.
Early on Sunday, an Israeli airstrike demolished the family’s second-floor apartment, killing Ms. Khattab, a 36-year-old teacher, and all her children, her family said. Their father, Ashraf Attar, narrowly escaped with his life.
“We collected the scattered body parts of the children,” said Ms. Khattab’s brother, Ahmad Khattab, a nurse who lives nearby and helped search the rubble. Mr. Khattab added, “There is absolutely no explanation” for the strike on the family.
The Israeli military confirmed an attack in Deir al-Balah on Sunday morning, saying that its air force had carried out a precision strike on “a significant Islamic Jihad terrorist” who had “directed attacks” on its troops throughout the war. The military said it had launched the strike after warning civilians on Friday to temporarily evacuate the area.
The military did not name the target of the strike, and it remained unclear if Israeli commanders believed he had lived in the Khattab family’s apartment or in another location.
The children’s father is also a nurse, not a militant, said Mr. Khattab 35. The strike demolished all the exterior walls of the family’s apartment in a three-story building, he said. The blast threw Mr. Attar from the apartment, leaving him with a broken arm and burned legs, the brother said.
The building is in an area that has never been ordered to evacuate during 10 months of war, and the family felt safe there, he said. The family did not receive an evacuation order or a warning call from the Israeli military just before the strike, either, Mr. Khattab said.
The strike came a day before Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel at what Mr. Blinken called “a decisive moment” for diplomatic negotiations aimed at reaching a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. The meeting came more than 10 months into a war that began when Hamas led an attack into southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and led to the abduction of about 250 others into Gaza, Israeli officials said.
More than 40,000 Palestinians have also been killed in the war, according to Gazan health authorities, and it has taken an exceptional toll on children, who have been caught in the middle.
Dr. Khalil al-Dagran, the director of Al-Aqsa Hospital, said that his hospital received the bodies of Ms. Khattab and her six children on Sunday morning.
“What did these children do?” Mohammed Khattab, the children’s grandfather, said in a video interview with the Reuters news agency.
Ahmad Khattab said the family had buried the six children in one grave.
— Hiba Yazbek and Abu Bakr Bashir Hiba Yazbek reported from Jerusalem.
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The United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, called on Friday for a weeklong cease-fire in Gaza to allow vaccinations to prevent an outbreak of polio, saying that many children were at risk. He spoke just a few hours before the first case of polio in the enclave in many years was confirmed in a statement from the Gaza health ministry.
“Preventing and containing the spread of polio will take a massive, coordinated and urgent effort,” Mr. Guterres said, adding, “It is impossible to conduct a polio vaccination campaign with war raging all over.” He also warned that the disease could spread to neighboring countries if it were not quickly contained.
Polio is a highly infectious disease that mostly affects young children, attacking the nervous system and potentially leading to spinal and respiratory paralysis, and in some cases death. The virus that causes it was found circulating in wastewater in Gaza in July.
Children are estimated to make up about half of Gaza’s population of some 2.2 million, and the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimated in May that more than 340,000 were under the age of 5. The Global Polio Eradication Initiative, a public-private partnership led by the World Health Organization, said that vaccination rates were high until the war began more than 10 months ago.
According to the World Health Organization, the disease has existed since prehistoric times, and has been eradicated in much of the world since vaccination campaigns began in the 1950s. Its resurgence in Gaza — which the United Nations said had been polio-free for 25 years — reflects the destruction of the territory’s waste and water systems, which, along with malnourishment bordering on famine, has caused a multitude of grave health threats for Palestinians sealed in the territory. After the virus was found in the enclave’s wastewater, the Israeli military said it would begin vaccinating soldiers in Gaza.
The W.H.O. and UNICEF, the U.N. agency for children, have also called for a pause in the war to conduct vaccinations in Gaza. The Israeli agency that oversees policy for the Palestinian territories, known as COGAT, said in a weekly update on its activities on Friday that it would be working with the W.H.O. and UNICEF on the vaccination campaign.
The polio virus has been detected in wastewater samples in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza, and Deir al Balah, in the central part of the strip, both of which hold large populations of displaced Palestinians on the run from Israeli airstrikes.
The war has led to a drop in routine immunization coverage for the second dose of inactivated polio vaccine — going from 99 percent in 2022 to less than 90 percent in the first quarter of 2024, according to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative. This drop increased the risk of children contracting vaccine-preventable diseases, including polio, the group said in a statement on Friday joining the call for a truce for vaccinations.
The risk of polio spreading in Gaza, and internationally, the initiative’s statement said, is “high given gaps in children’s immunity due to disruptions in routine vaccination, decimation of the health system, constant population displacement, malnutrition and severely damaged water and sanitation systems.”
Gazan health officials said on Friday that “a number of children” had been seen with symptoms consistent with polio and that lab testing had revealed one of them was infected with the polio virus.
Mr. Guterres said that the United Nations was ready to begin an expansive vaccination effort that would focus on more than 640,000 children under the age of 10 in Gaza. He said that the W.H.O. had approved the release of 1.6 million doses of polio vaccines and that medical teams from UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinians, would administer them. The Gaza health ministry said it was working with the W.H.O., UNICEF and other organizations to prepare.
The vaccination campaign would involve giving recipients two rounds of injections, Mr. Guterres said. The effort would include 708 teams at hospitals and primary health care centers and involve 316 community outreach teams throughout Gaza, he said.
Carrying out such a large-scale operation would require a number of complicated arrangements: safety and access for both medical workers and vaccine recipients; the availability of equipment for the refrigeration of vaccines; fuel; cash; and internet and mobile services, Mr. Guterres said.
In a statement on Friday, Hamas said it supported the United Nations’ request for a seven-day truce for vaccinations and also demanded “the delivery of medicine and food to more than two million Palestinians trapped in the Gaza Strip.”
Among the other diseases spreading in the enclave is hepatitis A. More than 100,000 people in Gaza have contracted acute jaundice syndrome, or suspected hepatitis A, since the war between Hamas and Israel began, the W.H.O. said in July. In the developed world, hepatitis A is relatively rare, and often not very serious. But in chaotic and crowded places with poor sanitation and malnutrition, it becomes much more common and dangerous.
Since the war began, aid workers have also warned of the possibility of an epidemic of cholera, which could quickly lead to mass mortality, but so far none has materialized.
