A senior Hamas official has dismissed optimistic talk by US President Joe Biden that a Gaza truce is nearer after negotiations in the Gulf emirate of Qatar.
"To say that we are getting close to a deal is an illusion," Hamas political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri told AFP.
"We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats."
He was responding to Mr Biden's comment that, "We are closer than we have ever been".
Mr Biden spoke after two days of talks in Qatar where Washington tried to bridge differences between Israel and Palestinian Hamas militants.
The two sides have been at war for more than ten months in Gaza.
Previous optimism during months of on-off truce talks has so far proven futile.
But the stakes have significantly risen since the killings in quick succession in late July of Fuad Shukr, a top operations chief of Lebanon's Iran-backed Hezbollah movement, and Hamas political chief Ismail Haniyeh.
Their deaths led to vows of vengeance from Hezbollah, Iran and other Tehran-backed groups in the region which blamed Israel.
In an effort to avert a broader conflict, Western and Arab diplomats have been shuttling around the Middle East to push for a Gaza deal which they say could help avert a wider regional conflagration.
Blinken to travel to Israel to finalise agreement
Mr Biden's secretary of state, Antony Blinken, was to head to Israel today in a bid to finalise an agreement.
Mr Blinken will seek to "conclude the agreement for a ceasefire and release of hostages and detainees through the bridging proposal" presented yesterday during talks in Doha by the US, a State Department statement said.
Mr Biden spoke by telephone with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani to discuss the "significant progress" in the talks, National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said.
Mr Biden and the two key Arab leaders had publicly urged Hamas and Israel to join the talks.
The White House said diplomats will keep working on details with a hope to conclude the accord later next week in Cairo.
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"This is kind of the final stage - the end game of the process," a senior US official told reporters on customary condition of anonymity.
The diplomats are setting up an "implementation cell" so that an agreement will "be implemented rapidly once deal is included," he said.
The State Department statement said the proposal "would achieve a ceasefire in Gaza, secure the release of all hostages, ensure humanitarian assistance is distributed throughout Gaza and create the conditions for broader regional stability."
"Secretary Blinken will underscore the critical need for all parties in the region to avoid escalation or any other actions that could undermine the ability to finalise an agreement," it said.
It will be the ninth trip by Mr Blinken to the Middle East since Hamas on 7 October carried out the deadliest-ever attack on Israel, which has responded with a relentless military campaign in Gaza.
The State Department did not immediately announce any stops after Israel.
Mr Blinken has met with key Arab allies on previous trips.
The Israeli delegation included spy chief David Barnea, head of the domestic security service Ronen Bar and the military's hostages chief Nitzan Alon, defence officials said.
The White House sent CIA Director Bill Burns and US Middle East envoy Brett McGurk. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Egypt's intelligence chief Abbas Kamel were also taking part.
Israeli strike in Gaza kills at least 17
At least 17 Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded in an Israeli strike in the Gaza town of Zawayda on Saturday, health officials said, as Israel issued new evacuation orders, citing Hamas rocket fire nearby.
Most of the people killed were from the same family and they included eight children and four women, according to health officials in the Hamas-administered enclave.
"They were asleep in their beds, kids and babies, then three missiles targeted their place," said Abu Ahmed Hassan, a neighbour. The owner of the house was a known merchant, he said. "There are no military activities here at all," he added.
The Israeli military said in response that it had struck militant targets in an area from which rockets had been fired at its troops, adding the incident was under review.
Israel's military spokesperson posted instructions in Arabic on X on Saturday for people in parts of central Gaza, including in Maghazi district which is near Zawayda, to evacuate to a designated humanitarian zone.
He said militants were firing rockets from those locations and that the military was preparing to act against them.
Reuters could not immediately verify whether any areas of Zawayda were among those ordered to evacuate and whether people there received the military's instructions. Residents said thousands were streaming out of Maghazi.
A separate Israeli airstrike on a car in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin killed at least two Palestinians, one an 18-year-old, the Palestinian health ministry said.
Israel's military said it conducted an aerial strike on armed militants in the Jenin area, but had no further details.
Violence in the West Bank has escalated since the war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas broke out last October, with more Israeli raids, Jewish settler violence and Palestinian street attacks.
On Friday, two sections of the southern city of Khan Younis within what Israel has designated as a humanitarian zone were deemed dangerous by the military, which ordered people to evacuate them saying that militants had been regularly firing rockets from there.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said Friday's orders, which also included other areas of the enclave outside the humanitarian zones, had affected around 170,000 displaced people.
"This is one of the largest evacuation orders affecting the zone to date and it shrinks the size of the so-called 'humanitarian area' to about 41 square kilometres, or 11 percent of the total area of the Gaza Strip," an OCHA report said.
In the central part of the enclave, residents said that Israeli tanks advanced further on Saturday into the eastern area of Deir Al-Balah, an area they had not invaded before, where hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
The Israeli military said that since Friday its forces had killed dozens of militants, including some who had fired rockets from central and southern Gaza.
