By Olivier Acuña Barba •
Published: 19 Aug 2025 • 13:41
• 2 minutes read
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu shrugged off Hamas ceasefire agreement acceptance and continued plans to annihilate the armed terror group and displace up to a million Palestinians across the Gaza Strip | Credit: Anas-Mohammed/Shutterstock
Hamas officials said on Monday, 18 August, that they accept a proposal for a Gaza ceasefire deal that would include the release of half of the approximately 50 Israeli hostages, 20 still living, as part of the deal to end the war.
“The Hamas movement and the Palestinian factions have conveyed their approval on the proposal presented yesterday by the Egyptian and Qatari mediators,” the terror group said in a statement, according to The Times of Israel.
After the agreement was reported, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Jerusalem had received Hamas’s latest proposal, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu seemingly dismissed the Hamas response and signalled that Israel was moving forward with its plan to take over the Palestinian enclave’s largest city and transfer its population to the southern Strip. “We can see clearly that Hamas is under immense pressure,” Netanyahu said.
Israel kills 30 Palestinians across Gaza
As Hamas agreed to the ceasefire, Israel has pounded Gaza, killing at least 30 Palestinians across the strip as the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) intensified their attacks on the Strip, Al Jazeera reported. For now, it appears the Jewish state will continue with its plans to seize and forcibly displace up to a million Palestinians, the news agency added.
The proposal from Egypt and Qatar is said to be based on a framework put forward by US envoy Steve Witkoff in June and which have been taking place in Cairo in recent days, and comes after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was confronted on Sunday by Israel’s biggest protests of the war, which called for a deal to secure the release of the hostages.
Netanyahu has criticised the large-scale street protests against his handling of the Gaza war, and his failure to secure the release of the remaining hostages, claiming that demonstrators were giving comfort to Hamas’s position in negotiations.
‘We have to … defeat Hamas’
In words that appear to reject any peace deal with Hamas, Netanyahu said, “To advance our hostages’ release and to ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel, we have to finish the job and defeat Hamas.”
Since the war in Gaza began, more than 658,000 children have been forced out of school, and more than 90 per cent of the enclave’s educational facilities have been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
