CAIRO (AP) — Israeli forces killed at least 31 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday, local hospitals said, as questions churned about U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan aimed at ending the nearly two-year war in Gaza.
Hamas announced it would review the proposal with group members and other Palestinian factions before reaching a decision.
But Qatar, a key mediator with Hamas, said further talks were needed to work out the details of the proposal. It was a sign further negotiations could be ahead, even as Trump told reporters Tuesday that Hamas has “three or four days” to respond.
Arab mediators, along with Turkish officials, are scheduled to meet with Hamas representatives Tuesday in the Qatari capital Doha to discuss the plan, said the spokesman for Qatar’s Foreign Ministry, Majed Al Ansari.
While the proposal offers an end to the fighting, guarantees the flow of humanitarian aid and promises reconstruction, the Palestinian militant group will have to disarm, something it has rejected in the past. Also, Gaza and its more than 2 million Palestinians would be put under international governance for the foreseeable future.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu backs the plan, and several leaders of Arab countries have applauded it.
Palestinians are skeptical
Many Palestinians in the decimated coastal enclave are wary of the proposal. Notably, the plan sets no path to Palestinian statehood and brings a so-called “Board of Peace,” headed by Trump and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, to supervise the administration of Gaza.
To some, that smacked of the colonial British Mandate over Palestine from 1920 to 1948, when the British ran the area.
“They want to impose their own peace,” Umm Mohammed, a history teacher who sheltered with her family in Gaza City, told The Associated Press. “In fact, this is not a peace plan. It’s a surrender plan. It returns us to times of colonialism.”
Mahmoud Abu Baker, a displaced Palestinian from Rafah, said the proposal favors Israel and implements all its demands without giving concessions.
“(The proposal) tells that we, as Palestinians, as Arabs, are not qualified to rule ourselves and that they, the white people, will rule us,” he said.
Israelis bank on Trump despite doubt
With the peace proposal, families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas were torn between heightened hopes and a realism that past signs of progress have fallen apart. Hamas is thought to be holding 48 hostages, 20 of whom are believed by Israel to be alive – and under the plan, they would be freed within 72 hours of both sides’ accepting the deal.
“For two years now, I have been waiting for Elkana, my husband, in endless pain,” said Rivka Bohbot, wife of hostage Elkana Bohbot, in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“Now I demand that these impressive words be turned into even greater and more impressive actions — actions that bring the hostages home,” she said of Trump and Netanyahu’s announcement.
Israelis visiting a memorial for the music festival where 364 people were killed during the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023, expressed skepticism that the proposal will end the war.
Amit Zander, whose daughter, Noa Zander, was killed at the festival, said Trump was the only one with enough power to make a deal happen.
“Everyone pins their hopes on (Trump) … it’s up to Hamas. Israel wants it, and beyond that, it’s no longer in our hands,” he said.
Qatar says more discussion needed
While Arab countries back the plan, Arab officials told The Associated Press that the 20-point text released by the White House on Monday included changes to the draft that they had previously discussed with Trump, making the proposal more favorable to Israel.
They pointed to the vague terms about the withdrawal of Israel’s troops, the lack of a timeframe for allowing the Palestinian Authority to govern Gaza and the lack of a clear pathway to a state. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the behind-the-scenes talks.
Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the issue of the Israeli troop withdrawal “requires clarification, and this must be discussed.”
“What was presented yesterday are principles in the plan that require detailed discussion and how to work through them,” he told the Qatar-based TV network Al Jazeera.
More than 30 Palestinians killed
In the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops opened fire, killing 17 Palestinians and wounding 33 others while they were attempting to access humanitarian aid in central Gaza, according to nearby Al-Awda Hospital, where the casualties were taken.
Israeli strikes in central and southern Gaza killed 14 others, according to local hospitals.
One of the strikes hit a tent housing a family that had fled Gaza City earlier this month, killing seven people, including four women and a child. Another killed a man, his 7-months-pregnant wife and their young child, Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis said.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on the shooting or strikes. It said in a statement that over the past 24 hours, its troops killed several armed militants and struck more than 160 targets of Hamas infrastructure, including weapons storage facilities and observation posts.
Hospitals overwhelmed as Palestinians flee Gaza City
Meanwhile, hospitals in southern Gaza are gearing up for a flood of displaced wounded and sick Palestinians, as tens of thousands are forced to flee Gaza City in the face of Israel’s stepped-up offensive there.
Over 450,000 people have been displaced from the north since mid-August, mostly from Gaza City, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of thousands are believed to remain in the city, where a famine has been declared.
“We don’t have enough material. We don’t have enough medications. The number of people, particularly the people coming down from Gaza … is starting to overwhelm the facilities which were already too full from before,” said Dr. Paul Ransom, an emergency doctor volunteering at UK-Med, a British aid charity which runs one of the main field hospitals in southern Gaza.
He said over the past weeks, thousands of wounded arrived from the north, many with dirty open wounds because of long road journeys. Others showed severe signs of malnutrition, he said.
The UK-Med-operated field hospital is expanding its 90-bed capacity field hospital to include over 110 beds, he said. Nasser Hospital, the main general medical facility in southern Gaza, is already overwhelmed and is trying to expand its 300-bed capacity.
At Nasser, there were often 150 wounded in just one hour over the past three months, he added.
“It is like a conveyor belt of death and injury that we are seeing coming through the bigger hospital here in Nasser,” he said.
Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 66,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 170,000 others, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. The ministry does not differentiate between civilians and militants in its toll, but has said women and children make up around half the dead.
Its campaign was triggered by Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and abducted 250 others. Most of the hostages have been freed under previous ceasefire deals.
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Lidman reported from Jerusalem. Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb in Beirut contributed to this report.
By SAMY MAGDY and MELANIE LIDMAN
Associated Press
