Hamas agrees to start talks

GAZA, July 06 (Reuters/AP): Hamas has accepted a US proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, 16 days after the first phase of an agreement aimed at ending the Gaza war, a senior Hamas source said on Saturday.
The militant Islamist group has dropped a demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the agreement, and would allow negotiations to achieve that throughout a first six-week phase, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the talks are private.
A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts had said the proposal could lead to a framework agreement if embraced by Israel and would end the nine-month-old war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
The conflict has claimed the lives of more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials. The war erupted after Hamas attacked southern Israeli cities on Oct 7, killing 1,200 people and taking some 250 hostages.
The Hamas source said the proposal ensures that mediators would guarantee a temporary ceasefire, aid delivery and withdrawal of Israeli troops as long as indirect talks continue to implement the second phase of the agreement.
Gaza's biggest soccer stadium
now shelter displaced people
Thousands of displaced Palestinians in northern Gaza have sought refuge in what was once the territory's biggest soccer arena, where families scrape by with little food or water as they try to keep one step ahead of Israel's latest offensive.
Their makeshift tents hug the shade below the stadium's seating, with clothes hung in the July sun across the dusty, dried-up soccer field. Under the covered benches where players used to sit on the sidelines, Um Bashar bathes a toddler standing in a plastic tub. Lathering soap through the boy's hair, he wiggles and shivers as she pours the chilly water over his head, and he grips the plastic seats for balance.
They've been displaced multiple times, she said, most recently from Israel's renewed operations against Hamas in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City.
"We woke up and found tanks in front of the door," she says. "We didn't take anything with us, not a mattress, not a pillow, not any clothes, not a thing. Not even food."
She fled with about 70 others to Yarmouk Sports Stadium - a little under 2 miles (3 kilometers) northwest of Shijaiyah, which was heavily bombed and largely emptied early in the war. Many of the people who ended up in the stadium say they have nothing to return to.
"We left our homes," said one man, Hazem Abu Thoraya, "and all of our homes were bombed and burned, and all those around us were as well."
Hundreds of thousands of people have remained in northern Gaza, even as Israeli troops have surrounded and largely isolated it. However, aid flows there have improved recently, and the U.N. said earlier this week that it is now able to meet people's basic needs in the north. Israel says it allows aid to enter Gaza and blames the U.N. for not doing enough to move it.
Still, residents say the deprivation and insecurity are taking an ever-growing toll.