Cairo — Hamas said on Saturday that it has not been presented with any formal plan from Washington to halt the war in Gaza, even as Israeli forces pushed deeper into Gaza City and residents described another day of bombardment and flight. The claim arrived hours after President Donald Trump told reporters in Washington that “it’s looking like we have a deal on Gaza,” a remark that ricocheted through capitals already bracing for his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday. Earlier in the day, Hamas said it hasn’t received any plan, even as reports circulated about a framework.
The distance between the battlefield and the talk of a framework for ending the war felt wide. In Gaza City under intensified strikes, Israeli armor and infantry pressed into several northern and central neighborhoods, a continuation of the expanded ground offensive that began weeks ago. The Israeli military said it struck scores of targets across the strip. The Health Ministry in Gaza reported dozens of people killed in the past 24 hours. Aid groups said medical services were contracting again, with clinics shuttered and malnutrition centers unable to operate consistently.
Hamas’s statement, delivered on background by an official who asked not to be named, underscored the confusion surrounding what, if anything, is on paper. The denial followed reporting in the Israeli press that described a proposal in which Hamas would release hostages in exchange for a phased release of Palestinian prisoners, a gradual Israeli withdrawal, and the end of Hamas’s administrative rule in the enclave. The White House has not published a formal document, and Israeli leaders have not publicly endorsed any text. For now, the public record is a series of hints, rumors and hardened positions — including coverage of a 21-point proposal under discussion among U.S. and regional officials.
Mr. Trump’s comment on Friday was the most definitive signal yet that his administration has been pushing a new package across regional capitals. People familiar with the discussions say the outline includes time-bound steps to stabilize security, an international role in Gaza’s governance during an interim period, and a path toward a more permanent political arrangement. The language under consideration, according to diplomats and analysts, seeks to avoid forced displacement of Gazans while offering Israel assurances on border security and demilitarization benchmarks. None of those assurances, however, answer the central question of who governs Gaza day to day, and on whose legitimacy.
The politics surrounding the plan are as fraught as the fighting. Mr. Netanyahu leads a coalition that has repeatedly pledged to continue the campaign until Hamas is destroyed. Hamas, for its part, is trying to survive militarily and politically, and has said any agreement must guarantee a full withdrawal, the return of displaced families to the north, and a substantial exchange of prisoners. Qatar and Egypt remain the essential mediators — a role each has emphasized in recent days through official statements in Doha’s foreign ministry briefings and Cairo’s UNGA diplomacy readouts — but they are constrained by Israeli domestic politics and by Hamas’s internal calculations, which now include the demands of a starving civilian population and the group’s own decentralized command on the ground.
Residents of Gaza City are navigating the war at street level. Evacuation orders have become a moving target, with leaflets, text blasts, and messages on social media directing civilians to leave blocks that were supposed to be “safer” the day before. Families described loading children into carts and wheelchairs, walking past pulverized buildings and live fire to neighborhoods where they believed relatives might take them in. Doctors said intensive care units were running on thinning fuel supplies. Pharmacists reported that common antibiotics were scarce. Aid agencies said lines for bread and drinking water formed before dawn and often dissolved under the sound of incoming strikes.
The cumulative toll is staggering. Nearly two years after Hamas’s October 2023 assault that killed about 1,200 people in Israel and led to the capture of hostages, Gaza has lost much of its infrastructure and much of its public health capacity. Health officials in the enclave report death tolls that have climbed well beyond earlier estimates, while international monitors have confirmed that famine conditions have taken hold in parts of the strip. The World Health Organization’s recent assessment describes hospitals operating at multiple times their intended capacity. The global food-security consortium confirms a famine classification for northern Gaza, and the U.N. relief office has logged repeated breakdowns in access, as detailed in its latest Gaza situation update.
On Saturday, Médecins Sans Frontières said it had suspended medical activities in Gaza City after Israeli units encircled areas around its clinics, making patient and staff movement impossible. The decision was announced in an MSF statement on the security environment and staff safety, which said teams could not move without unacceptable risk. Details are in MSF’s suspension notice. In parallel, U.N. agencies have documented malnutrition rising in urban districts: a recent UNRWA situation report notes alarming screening results in Gaza City.
The next political marker is Mr. Netanyahu’s Monday visit to Washington for a meeting with Mr. Trump. The Israeli leader arrives under intensifying international criticism about the humanitarian fallout and a growing European debate over penalties on settlement expansion and settler violence in the West Bank. Yet he also arrives with a domestic base that regards battlefield pressure as the surest path to freeing hostages and deterring rivals on other fronts. Mr. Trump, meanwhile, has reason to show progress on a signature foreign policy crisis while facing skepticism from hawks who believe any interim arrangement that leaves bureaucratic space for Palestinian governance is a concession too far. The optics around his UN week already include walkouts at the UN General Assembly during the Israeli leader’s address and the hardening of his “finish the job” line.
In conversations across the region, questions proliferate. If Hamas is excluded from a future governing authority in Gaza, who organizes garbage pickup, school calendars, compensation for destroyed homes, and security patrols in dense neighborhoods where rival factions and criminal networks are reemerging? If an international stabilization mission deploys, which countries contribute, under what rules of engagement, and how do they avoid becoming combatants the first time a patrol is ambushed or a convoy is struck? If Israel withdraws to a perimeter and sketches a buffer, what does that mean for fishermen and farmers who rely on land and sea access now split by military lines?
A striking feature of the last month is how often the battlefield has dictated the diplomacy. Each time Israeli forces expand operations in Gaza City, the prospect of an immediate ceasefire seems to recede. Each time a long-range rocket or drone arcs out of the strip, Israeli policymakers point to the need for more raids and arrests. The hostage issue, which has dominated Israeli politics since the first days of the war, remains the central lever: Hamas seeks a sweeping exchange; the Israeli government has signaled openness to staggered releases paired with long pauses, but not to what it calls capitulation. Humanitarian officials say the environment for negotiations is shaped by access constraints and persistent insecurity, with OCHA’s impact snapshots cataloging the churn.
Inside Gaza, the debate over a “day after” is a luxury. The day to day is survival. Families move repeatedly, reading the patterns of strikes and guessing at which stairwells might hold. Parents keep children’s shoes by their beds to speed escape. Small markets pop up beside rubble heaps, selling biscuits or bottled water at prices that change by the week. Neighborhood committees reassemble to share charging cables, solar panels and the few working refrigerators. Teachers run ad hoc lessons for restless children who sleep in borrowed classrooms. Young men collect scrap rebar, selling it by the kilo to buy food. Medical students shadow surgeons in corridors, learning in days what residency programs teach in months. In central Gaza, grief has been sharpened by specific incidents — including reports of children killed in Az-Zawayda as strikes rolled across multiple districts.
Hamas’s denial of receiving any plan was not simply a procedural note. It was a signal about leverage. If the group acknowledges a text, it admits the negotiations have moved into a closing phase in which it must decide quickly under bombardment. If it denies receipt, it buys time and blunts pressure from mediators who want a concession that could crack internal cohesion. For Israel, the calculus is the mirror image. If there is a plan with an end state that does not include full control in Gaza, parts of Mr. Netanyahu’s coalition may balk. If there is no plan, or if the terms are softer than the right wing demands, he stands accused of squandering momentum and inviting another round of fighting months from now.
The language reported in recent days points to a proposal that tries to square that circle by sequencing security, governance and humanitarian tracks. The first days would focus on a full ceasefire and the return of hostages and remains. Subsequent phases would bring in an interim authority with international backing, a scaled Israeli withdrawal, and a build-out of aid and reconstruction capped by a political horizon. Even the best-case version of this timeline would require the kind of logistics Gaza has not seen since before the blockade years: predictable crossings, fuel in volume, and safe corridors for workers and technicians. It would also require a civilian registry that can administer compensation and housing without favoritism or graft, alongside sustained pressure from technology and policy circles, including Microsoft’s limits on military AI and Washington’s weapons pipeline, recently spotlighted in a $6 billion US weapons package.
There is one more variable: the regional map. Hezbollah’s threat posture on Israel’s northern frontier, and periodic bursts of fire across that line, constantly threaten to change the war’s cost calculus. In the Red Sea, attacks attributed to Houthi fighters have pushed insurance costs for shipping higher, altering how and where aid moves. In the West Bank, settler attacks and Israeli raids have kept the territory on edge. Each of these fronts intrudes on the Gaza file. Diplomats say no plan survives first contact with a regional escalation, and donors will not write reconstruction checks if they fear bridges and pipelines built this winter will be leveled by spring. Against that backdrop, the policy debate now includes sustained calls to reopen a medical corridor to the West Bank for critically ill Gazans.
For Gazans, the debate over language in documents they have never seen can feel abstract. The concrete reality is displacement and grief. The United Nations estimates that many hundreds of thousands have moved again since the latest offensive expanded in Gaza City. Aid officials caution that the denominator is almost the entire population, and virtually all of it is on the move. Families telephone cousins in Rafah or Deir al-Balah before a new departure and ask the same questions: Is there space on the floor. Is there a working tap nearby. Is there anywhere to charge a phone. People travel at first light to avoid midday heat and the sound of jets. They travel again when the pattern of strikes shifts. In this climate, even authoritative briefings — like the IDF’s note that more than half a million have left Gaza City and operations are ongoing — contained in its evacuation update, land differently inside homes already displaced multiple times.
Even if a plan lands on negotiators’ tables this week, there will be the question of trust. Gazans remember previous lulls that collapsed under pressure, and Israelis remember ceasefire arrangements that masked the rebuilding of militant capacity. Any text now would have to do more than exchange hostages for prisoners and map a withdrawal. It would have to build verification into every phase, put cash and materials under monitoring without starving civilians of help, and pair reconstruction spending with credible policing that does not lend itself to factional capture. The near term will not be measured in paragraphs. It will be measured in whether shells stop falling, whether bakeries reopen, and whether families can sleep in the same room for more than a night. Recent reporting on casualties and renewed bombardment, including Associated Press accounts of mass casualty incidents, underlines the distance between draft language and lived reality.
That, ultimately, is the gap between Saturday’s headlines and Monday’s calendar. A president says a deal is close. A militant group says it has seen no deal at all. An Israeli leader arrives in Washington with a war still very much underway. And in Gaza City, the sound that carries down shattered streets is the sound that has defined this war for months: the whine of drones, the crack of small arms, and the steady scrape of families dragging their belongings toward an address they hope will be safer by nightfall.
