Israeli strikes in Gaza on Saturday killed at least two people and damaged warehouses for medical supplies, Palestinian officials said, despite a recent deal between President Trump’s Board of Peace and Hamas to advance the Gaza cease-fire.
One of the strikes destroyed and damaged the warehouses at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza before dawn on Saturday, said Khalil Dagran, a hospital spokesman. The outpatient clinic was also damaged, he added, though there were no reports of casualties.
The Israeli military said it had bombarded the warehouses because Hamas was storing weapons there and using the facility as a hide-out. Mr. Dagran disputed the Israeli allegation, adding that Israeli forces had warned Palestinians to flee ahead of the bombing.
A second Israeli strike on Saturday, in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City, killed two Palestinians, according to local health officials. The Israel military confirmed the attack but declined to provide details about why the two were targeted.
The strikes came days after Mr. Trump announced that Hamas had agreed to give up its weapons during negotiations with his Board of Peace, a body that he formed last year to oversee a truce between Israel and Hamas. Hamas’s disarmament had become a monthslong sticking point in moving forward from that initial cease-fire.
On Friday, after the deal was announced, Hamas said that the “first step” would be for Israel to commit to ending attacks and linked the turnover of what the group called “heavy weapons” to a list of other conditions.
It is unclear whether Israel has agreed to the proposal. The road map stipulates a gradual withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, as well as a “cessation of military operations,” as some of the conditions for Hamas to “decommission and store” weapons.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has yet to comment on the deal, which emerged on Thursday night. The Israeli government, in a written statement circulated on Friday, said the Israeli military would not withdraw from its “current” lines in Gaza without “genuine” disarmament by Hamas, attributing the comments to an unnamed diplomatic official.
Israel has long demanded that Hamas disarm so as to prevent the Palestinian militant group from ever carrying out another assault similar to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the Gaza war. But Mr. Netanyahu, who faces an uphill re-election battle later this year, could balk at anything that voters might view as a concession to Hamas.
U.S. officials hope the proposal will pave the way for an end to the nearly three-year crisis in the Gaza Strip, which began with the October 2023 Hamas-led attack on southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people and saw around 250 taken hostage.
The subsequent two-year Israeli military campaign against Hamas laid waste to the Palestinian enclave, killing more than 70,000 people, according to local health officials. Their tally does not specify how many were combatants, but it includes thousands of children.
A cease-fire last October, brokered by the Trump administration, was supposed to end the fighting. While the deal offered Gaza’s two million Palestinians a reprieve from full-blown war, it has looked nothing like peace.
Israel has continued to bomb Gaza on a near-daily basis, saying that Hamas was seeking to rearm and that it was targeting the group’s militants. More than 1,000 people have been killed since the truce, according to local officials, including young children.
While Israeli forces initially withdrew to an agreed-upon “yellow line” as part of the cease-fire, they have since steadily advanced. They now control more than 60 percent of the Gaza Strip, hemming the majority of its Palestinian residents into a shrinking area near the coast.
Both the United States and Israel said they would not allow Gaza to be rebuilt as long as Hamas ruled Gaza and kept its battalions of armed fighters.
Armed struggle against Israel has long been central to Hamas’s ideology and a means to stay in power. Many members of the group view any deal in which they would give up their weapons as tantamount to surrender.
Many of the details still need to be hammered out, and analysts question whether Israel and Hamas intend to see the process through. The deal does not yet include a firm a timeline for Hamas to give up its heavy weapons, or for Israeli forces to gradually withdraw from Gaza.
