“They want the aggression to stop and not temporarily, not where (the Israelis) take the hostages and then the Palestinian people live in a grinder.”

Israeli government spokesperson Avi Hyman told reporters: “We have received an update, we have received notification from the Qatari negotiators. We are looking at them. The Mossad is looking intently at what was presented to us.”

Ezzat El-Reshiq, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said the group’s aim was “to stop the aggression against our Palestinian people and secure a complete and lasting ceasefire as well as provide relief, aid, shelter and reconstruction.”

Hamas proposes three-phase truce

According to the offer document seen by Reuters and confirmed by sources, during the first 45-day phase all Israeli women hostages, males under 19 and the elderly and sick would be released, in exchange for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails. Israel would withdraw troops from Gaza’s populated areas.

Implementation of the second phase would not begin until the sides conclude “indirect talks over the requirements needed to end the mutual military operations and return to complete calm”.

The second phase would include the release of remaining male hostages and full Israeli withdrawal from all of Gaza. The remains of the dead would be exchanged during the third phase.

“People are optimistic, at the same time they pray that this hope turns into a real agreement that will end the war,” Yamen Hamad, a father of four sheltering in a UN school in Deir Al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip told Reuters via a messaging app.

In Rafah, on the southern edge of the Gaza Strip where half of the enclave’s 2.3 million people are penned against the border fence with Egypt, the bodies of 10 people killed by Israeli strikes overnight were laid out in a hospital morgue. At least two of the shrouded bundles were the size of small children. Relatives wept beside the dead.

Palestinian health officials say an Israeli air strike killed another three people in a house in Rafah on Wednesday. The officials added that a senior Palestinian police officer and Hamas member, Majdi Abdel-Al, was killed in an Israeli air strike on a car that was tasked to secure aid trucks in Rafah.

Israel began its military offensive after militants from Hamas-ruled Gaza killed 1200 people and took 253 hostages in southern Israel on October 7. Gaza’s Health Ministry says at least 27,585 Palestinians have been confirmed killed, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. There has been only one truce so far, lasting just a week at the end of November.

Netanyahu is under competing pressure from far-right members of his coalition government who say they will quit rather than endorse any deal that fails to eradicate Hamas, and from families of hostages who demand a deal to bring them home.

Washington has cast the hostage and truce deal as part of plans for a wider resolution of the Middle East conflict, ultimately leading to reconciliation between Israel and Arab neighbours and the creation of a Palestinian state.

Netanyahu has rejected a Palestinian state, which Saudi Arabia, the biggest prize in Israel’s quest for acceptance from Middle East neighbours, says is a requirement for any deal to normalise relations with Israel.

The diplomacy comes as Israel is trying to capture the main city in Gaza’s south, Khan Younis. Last week, Israel said it plans to storm Rafah, a move UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Wednesday would “exponentially increase what is already a humanitarian nightmare with untold regional consequences.”

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Last week, Israel said it plans to storm Rafah, raising alarm among international aid organisations who say an assault on the last refuge at Gaza’s edge would cause a humanitarian catastrophe for more than a million displaced people.

The Israeli military said it had killed dozens of militants in fighting over the past 24 hours. It has made similar claims throughout the fighting in Khan Younis, which could not be independently verified.