Urgent appeal for humanitarian access and peace effort.

Gaza: Speaking at a joint press conference in Cairo, France’s top diplomat Stephane Sejourne said his government would put forward a draft resolution at the UN Security Council setting out a “political” settlement of the war.

He said the text would include “all the criteria for a two-state solution” of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the peace blueprint long championed by the international community but opposed by the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On Monday, the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Hamas-run Gaza, where the health ministry says the death toll has reached 32,705, most of them women and children.

The war started when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, which resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

The International Court of Justice ordered Israel on Thursday to “ensure urgent humanitarian assistance” reaches civilians in Gaza, saying “famine has set in” after more than five months of fighting.

But “international law no longer has any impact on the ground when it comes to Israel,” Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told the Cairo news conference.

“The real disaster is the international community’s inability to prevent” the humanitarian catastrophe, Safadi said.

Alluding to the presence of far-right ministers in the Israeli government, he said the failure to provide sufficient aid was a “political decision by an extremist government which has decided to use starvation as a weapon.”

The three ministers renewed their governments’ support for the UN Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, which has faced a funding crisis since Israel alleged that a dozen of its 13,000 Gaza staff were implicated in the October 7 attack.

“Israel is not only starving Palestinians, but wants to kill the only entity capable of standing in the way of a famine,” Safadi said.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said Gaza “can endure no more destruction and humanitarian suffering”, and called on Israel to open its land crossings with the Gaza Strip to humanitarian aid.

Read more:Hamas Presents Ceasefire Proposal to Mediators

Nearly all aid into the territory has trickled through the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, where world leaders and the United Nations have accused Israel of impeding deliveries.

Truce talks between Israel & Hamas resume today in Cairo

Truce talks between Israel and Hamas will resume on Sunday in Cairo, the latest attempt to bring about a pause after nearly six months of war in the Gaza Strip, Egypt’s Al Qahera News TV reported, citing a security source.

An Israeli official told Reuters that Israel will send a delegation to Cairo on Sunday. A Hamas official however told Reuters the group would wait to hear from Cairo mediators on the outcome of their talks with Israel first.

The warring sides have stepped up negotiations, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, on a six-week suspension of Israel’s offensive in return for the proposed release of 40 of the 130 hostages still held by the Palestinian group in Gaza.

Hamas has sought to parlay any deal into an end to the fighting and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel has ruled this out, saying it would eventually resume efforts to dismantle the governance and military capabilities of Hamas.

Hamas also wants hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who fled Gaza City and surrounding areas southward during the first stage of the war to be allowed back north. One Israeli official said his country was open to discussing allowing back only “some” of the displaced.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, according to health authorities in the territory.

The war erupted after Hamas broke through the border and rampaged through communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel kept up its aerial and ground bombardment of the Gaza Strip on Friday, killing 82 Palestinians in the past 24 hours, the territory’s health ministry said as fighting raged around Gaza City’s main Al Shifa hospital.

The ministry added that Israeli forces in control of the hospital had blockaded 107 patients in the human resources department without water, electricity, or medication for several days, refusing all calls to evacuate them.

Armed wings of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad said their fighters continued to battle Israeli forces around the medical facility, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, which had been one of the few healthcare facilities even partially operational in north Gaza before the latest fighting.

The Israeli military said forces operating in Al Shifa killed three armed Hamas commanders inside two buildings of the medical facility. Forces located sniper rifles, AK-47s, magazines, and grenades during the activity, the military said.

Israel said it killed and detained hundreds of Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen at Al Shifa during its raid there. Hamas and medical staffers deny any armed presence inside medical facilities, accusing Israel of killing and arresting civilians.