CAIRO: Israel and Hamas remained deadlocked on how to halt nearly seven months of fighting in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands of people and forced more than a million Palestinians from their homes.

After no apparent progress was reported Sunday, the Hamas delegation left the Cairo negations with Qatari and Egyptian mediators to consult with it leadership. It said it planned to return to Cairo on Tuesday.

Earlier, Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said that the Palestinian militant group wants a comprehensive cease-fire that would end Israeli “aggression” and guarantee Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, while Hamas frees about 100 hostages in exchange for hundreds of prisoners jailed by Israel.

In a statement, Haniyeh blamed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for “the continuation of the aggression and the expansion of the circle of conflict, and sabotaging the efforts made through the mediators and various parties” who have for weeks been unsuccessful in negotiating a cease-fire of any sort.

In Jerusalem, Netanyahu rejected any end to the fighting that would leave Hamas in control of Gaza, the narrow territory along the Mediterranean Sea, and pose a continuing threat to the Jewish state.

Israeli officials did not send negotiators to Cairo to take part in indirect diplomacy.

Netanyahu said that “while Israel has shown willingness, Hamas remains entrenched in its extreme positions, first among them the demand to remove all our forces from the Gaza Strip, end the war, and leave Hamas in power.”

“Israel cannot accept that,” he said. “Hamas would be able to achieve its promise of carrying out again and again and again its massacres, rapes and kidnapping.”

Netanyahu, who has pushed for a six-week cease-fire and exchange of some hostages for jailed Palestinians, has repeatedly vowed to launch a ground offensive on Rafah, near the Gaza-Egyptian border, to root out four remaining Hamas battalions regardless of whether a cease-fire deal is reached.

The U.S., Israel’s chief arms supplier, has told Netanyahu it is adamantly opposed to a new attack on Rafah, which already has been under an Israeli aerial bombardment.

In Cairo, Palestinian officials said Hamas leaders held a second day of truce talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators, but there was no apparent progress reported.

One Palestinian official, close to the mediation effort, said the Hamas delegation had arrived in Cairo with a determination to reach a deal, “but not at any price.”

(VOA)