Israel and Hamas sent teams to Egypt on Sunday for ceasefire talks that included Qatari and Egyptian mediators as well as CIA Director William Burns. His presence underlined rising pressure from Israel’s main ally the US for a deal that would free Israeli hostages held in Gaza and get aid to Palestinian civilians.

“There is no change in the position of the occupation (Israel) and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” the Hamas official, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters on Saturday.

“There is no progress yet.”

In Jerusalem on Monday, a day after Israeli forces pulled back from some areas of southern Gaza, Netanyahu said he had received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo.

“We are constantly working to achieve our goals, first and foremost the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas,” Netanyahu said.

“This victory requires entry into Rafah and the elimination of the terrorist battalions there. It will happen – there is a date.”

He did not specify the date.

Rafah is the last refuge for Palestinian civilians displaced by relentless Israeli bombardments that have flattened their home neighbourhoods. It is also the last significant redoubt of Hamas combat units, Israel says.

More than one million people are crammed into the southern city in desperate conditions, short of food, water and shelter, and foreign governments and organisations have urged Israel against storming for fears of a bloodbath.

Hundreds of residents who had living in tents in Rafah returned to their devastated home areas on Monday following the Israeli pull-back. Some rode on donkey carts, rickshaws and open-deck vehicles while some just walked.

Palestinian medical officials said their teams had recovered more than 60 bodies from areas where the soldiers operated in the past months.

Western powers have voiced concern over the high Palestinian civilian death toll and the humanitarian crisis arising from Israel’s military onslaught to destroy Hamas in the densely populated Gaza Strip.

Some 33,207 Palestinians have been killed in six months of conflict, Gaza’s health ministry said in an update on Monday. Most of the enclave’s 2.3 million people are homeless and many at risk of famine.

Hamas killed 1200 people in southern Israel in the cross-border attack on October 7 that triggered the conflict, according to Israeli tallies. The Israeli army says over 600 of its soldiers have been killed in combat since.

In Washington, a White House spokesperson said the US hoped to secure a hostage release deal as soon as possible since it would also lead to a ceasefire of around six weeks. Hamas is reviewing a new proposal now, John Kirby said.

At the weekend, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz described the Cairo talks as the closest the sides have come to a deal since a short-lived November truce under which Hamas freed nearly half of its hostages.

Of the 253 people Hamas seized on October 7, 133 hostages remain captive. Negotiators have spoken of around 40 going free in the first stage of a prospective deal.

Two Egyptian security sources and state-run Al-Qahera News said some progress had been made in the Cairo talks. They said both sides had made concessions that could lead to a deal for a three-stage truce, with the release of any remaining Israeli hostages and a long-term ceasefire addressed in the second stage.

The concessions relate to freeing of hostages and Hamas’ demand for return of displaced residents to northern Gaza, they said. Mediators suggested the return could be monitored by an Arab force in the presence of Israeli security deployments that would later be pulled back, they added.

Delegations left Cairo and consultations were expected to continue within 48 hours, the sources and Al-Qahera said.

– AAP