The Israeli military issued broad evacuation orders on Sunday for neighborhoods of Gaza City, amid growing calls for a cease-fire deal from President Trump.
The notifications for people to leave parts of Gaza City and other areas in northern Gaza where Israeli troops have refrained from operating for months, came as the Israeli military warned that it would intensify operations that would expand westward toward the city center. Residents were instructed to move south.
Attention in Israel and Washington has refocused on Gaza since Israel’s 12-day war with Iran ended on Tuesday. The military campaign in Gaza — which was ignited by the Hamas-led October 2023 attack on Israel — has lasted more than 630 days and is one of Israel’s most protracted and deadliest wars.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is facing increasing pressure at home to end the conflict by agreeing a cease-fire deal that would see Hamas release the hostages still being held in the enclave. Those hostages include up to 20 people who were taken captive in the October 2023 attack and are believed to still be alive, along with the remains of about 30 others.
Mr. Trump on Sunday publicly pressed for a deal. “MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!! DJT,” he wrote on social media, hours after arguing that Mr. Netanyahu’s long-running corruption trial be canceled since it would interfere with “the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas.”
The president had suggested on Friday that there could be an agreement between Israel and Hamas within a week. But Mr. Trump has offered no details on what may have changed, and analysts said it was unclear what his claim was based on.
Israel and Hamas do not negotiate directly. But no Israeli negotiating teams have been dispatched to mediating countries, such as Qatar and Egypt — a sign of how far apart the two sides remain.
It was also unclear if the military’s evacuation orders on Sunday heralded a new phase in its offensive, a return to areas that were partially destroyed in previous rounds of fighting, or if they were partly intendedas a pressure tactic to try to get Hamas to concede to Israel’s terms for ending the war.
Gaza City and other areas in the northern part of the enclave were largely emptied earlier in the war following previous evacuation orders. But hundreds of thousands of residents of northern Gaza returned home during a two-month cease-fire, which collapsed when Israel resumed fighting in mid-March.
Negotiations since then for a renewed cease-fire have been at an impasse. Israel says it has accepted various versions of a proposal put forward by Steve Witkoff, the White House special envoy, which calls for a roughly two-month cease-fire and the release of about half the living hostages, along with the remains of some others. Talks for a permanent cease-fire would take place during that period.
Hamas says it will only release all the hostages in return for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an internationally guaranteed end of the war.
Israel has said the war can only end if Hamas’s surrenders and disarms, and it has demanded that the group’s leaders go into exile. Hamas has rejected those conditions.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 killed about 1,200 people, the majority of them civilians, according to the Israeli authorities. Israel’s counter offensive has killed more than 56,000 people in Gaza, according to the Gaza health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its data but has said more than half of the dead are women and children.
Isabel Kershner, a Times correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian affairs since 1990.
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