TEL AVIV: A delegation from mediator Egypt is travelling to Israel on Friday, a source close to the Israeli government said, in what local media said is a bid to reignite stalled captives-release negotiations.
The effort comes alongside preparations for a military push against Palestinian groups in southern Gaza's Rafah, and with spillover from the Gaza war leading to stepped-up exchanges of fire over Israel's northern border with Lebanon.
Israel's army on Friday said missile fire near that border killed an Israeli civilian. A Palestinian official said that any push into Rafah, where much of Gaza's population is sheltering, would threaten negotiations. Qatar, Egypt and the United States have mediated truce and captives-release talks, so far without success since a one-week halt to the fighting in November. That truce saw the exchange of 80 Israeli captives in return for 240 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Since then, global criticism of the war's toll on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has escalated, as have calls for groups there to release their captives. Israel vowed to destroy Palestinian groups, with a retaliatory offensive that has killed at least 34,305 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the territory's health ministry.
During their attack, Palestinians seized captives, 129 of whom Israel estimates remain in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead. Several Israeli media outlets, citing unnamed officials, said on Friday that the war cabinet discussed a new plan for a truce and captives release, ahead of the Egyptian delegation's visit.
Aid groups warn any Rafah invasion would add to already-catastrophic conditions in Gaza where, according to the World Food Programme, famine is "a real and dangerous threat".
Senior Palestinian Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said that Israel "will not achieve what it wants" in Rafah. After nearly seven months of war Israel had not achieved its goals, "whether eliminating Hamas or returning the captives", he said.
Hamad warned that an invasion "will undoubtedly threaten the negotiations" and show "that Israel is interested in continuing the war". After mediators failed to secure a truce for the Muslim holy fasting month of Ramadhan, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said last week that Qatar was reassessing its role.
Opposition to a military operation in Rafah extended to protesting university students in the United States. "Stop the invasion! Hands off Rafah!" said a sign among a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University in the US capital. The campus is one of many across the country -- Israel's biggest military supplier -- where protests over Israel's war have spread.
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