BENJAMIN NETANYAHU is the main obstacle to a ceasefire deal, Hamas said today, the day after thousands of protesters rallied in the Israeli capital to demand that the prime minister stop sabotaging talks.

Mr Netanyahu’s office expressed “cautious optimism” about a deal as a delegation returned to Cairo to resume discussions, but Hamas said that the Israeli PM has repeatedly introduced new demands whenever agreement is reached.

Its spokesman Osama Hamdan said: “The Israelis, in the two-day negotiations [just concluded in Qatar], rejected the paper, introduced by the Americans on June 24 based on Biden’s initiative.”

Israel’s murder of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran during talks is seen as having reduced chances of a ceasefire deal. Demands it is currently pressing include continued military control of the Gaza-Egypt border and the installation of military checkpoints to search Palestinians inside Gaza.

Israel continued to pound the coastal enclave over the weekend, with one bomb wiping out an entire family — a schoolteacher, her husband and their six children, the youngest just 18 months old. Over 40,000 Palestinians have now officially been killed since Israel’s invasion, though a study by British medical journal the Lancet said the true figure could be as high as 186,000.

The teacher’s father Mohammed Awad Khatab told reporters that “the six children have become body parts. They were placed in a single bag. What did they do? Will this provide security to Israel?”

The UN refugee agency for Palestinians said there was “nowhere safe” for Gaza residents to go after Israel issued another evacuation order for the town of Maghazi. “There is no more space for them to shelter in. Gaza needs a ceasefire now,” UNRWA urged.

The regular Saturday demonstration for a ceasefire and a return of the estimated 110 hostages still held by Hamas, which took about 250 Israelis captive in its October 7 attack on Israel last year, was larger than ever, with speakers  in Tel Aviv accusing Mr Netanyahu of blocking a deal.

Israeli attacks continued in the West Bank, with the Palestinian Authority saying that Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and Interior Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir were directly supervising the ethnic cleansing of Bedouin communities in Masafer Yatta and the Jordan Valley.