Washington makes new push for Gaza ceasefire to head off famine, Rafah assault

By Bassam Masoud, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Dan Williams

RAFAH, Gaza Strip/CAIRO/JERUSALEM (Reuters) - The United States made a fresh push on Tuesday for a ceasefire in Gaza to avert a manmade famine, while pressing its ally Israel to back away from plans for a ground assault on Rafah, last refuge for more than a million displaced people.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced a trip to the Middle East, where he would meet senior leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia to "discuss the right architecture for a lasting peace". Unusually, Blinken made no mention of a stop in Israel itself, and the Israeli foreign ministry said it had received no notification to prepare for one.

In Rafah, dazed survivors walked through the ruins of a home on Tuesday morning, one of several buildings hit in overnight Israeli air strikes that killed 14 people in the city, where more than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have been pushed against the southern border fence with Egypt.

At a nearby hospital morgue, relatives wailed beside corpses laid out on the cobbles. A woman peeled back a tiny bloodstained shroud to reveal the face of a small boy, rocking him back and forth in her arms.

"There’s U.S. support, European support and support of the whole world for Israel, they support them with weapons and planes," said one of the mourners, Ibrahim Hasouna. "They mock us and send four or five airdrops (of aid) just to save their faces."

The war, triggered when Hamas fighters crossed into Israel on a rampage, killing 1,200 people and capturing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies, is now in its sixth month.

Nearly 32,000 people have been confirmed killed in Israel's retaliatory onslaught, according to Palestinian health officials, with thousands more feared lost under the rubble.

The international hunger monitor relied on by the United Nations said on Monday that Gaza's food shortages had already far surpassed famine levels, and Gazans would soon be dying of hunger at famine-scale rates without an immediate truce.

Israel, which initially let in aid only through two checkpoints on Gaza's southern edge, denies blame for Gaza's hunger. It says it is now opening new routes by land, sea and air, and that U.N. and other aid agencies should do more to bring in food and distribute it.

The U.N. says that is impossible without better access and security, both of which it says are Israel's responsibility.

"The extent of Israel's continued restrictions on entry of aid into Gaza, together with the manner in which it continues to conduct hostilities, may amount to the use of starvation as a method of war, which is a war crime," said UN Human Rights Office spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.

PEACE TALKS RESUME IN QATAR

Ceasefire talks are resuming this week in Qatar after Israel rejected a Hamas counter-proposal last week. An Israeli delegation headed by the country's spy chief travelled to Qatar on Monday, although an Israeli official said Israel believed any agreement would take at least two weeks to nail down.

Both sides have been discussing a six-week truce during which around 40 Israeli hostages would be freed in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees and aid would be rushed into the Gaza Strip.

But they have yet to narrow differences over what would follow the truce, with Israel saying it will negotiate only for a temporary pause in fighting, and Hamas saying it will not release hostages without a wider plan to end the war.

A Palestinian official close to the mediation talks said the new round in Qatar was expected to be "very tough," accusing Israel of deliberately stalling.

"Israel's crimes on the ground complicate things and Netanyahu is playing the time game," the official, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.

The humanitarian suffering in Gaza, and the prospect of an assault on Rafah, have opened a clear rift between the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and its closest ally Washington under President Joe Biden.

Biden and Netanyahu spoke by phone on Monday, after which White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Washington wanted to discuss Israel's military plans before any assault on Rafah.

"Our position is that ... a major ground operation there would be a mistake," Sullivan told reporters. "Most importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means."

A member of Israel's security cabinet, Agriculture Minister Avi Dichter, said a ground assault was the only way to defeat Hamas batallions that Israel believes are holed up inside Rafah alongside more than a million displaced people.

"There is no way of destroying the terrorist and military infrastructure of Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza - including in Rafah - through aerial operations or messaging operations or through any other alternatives," Dichter told Kan radio.

Hamas said a senior police commander was killed in the Jabalia district of northern Gaza, along with his wife and children, in overnight air strikes, the second senior police official killed in two days after another was killed in an Israeli raid on Gaza City's Al Shifa hospital.

Israel says it will wage war in Gaza until Hamas is annihilated, and that its strikes in recent weeks are killing senior Hamas officials. White House adviser Sullivan confirmed overnight that Israel had killed Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of the Hamas military wing in Gaza, in a strike last week. Hamas has not confirmed he was killed.

In Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, Shaban Abdel-Raouf, a father of five, hoped the Qatari-hosted talks between Israel and Hamas would finally yield a truce.

“We are looking forward to the good news from Qatar. Will it happen this time? Will they seal a deal? Over two million people in Gaza are praying they do,” Abdel-Raouf told Reuters via a messaging app.

(Writing by Peter Graff; editing by Christina Fincher)