Hamas said Sat­ur­day that it was re­view­ing a new Is­raeli pro­pos­al for a cease-fire in Gaza, as Egypt in­ten­si­fied ef­forts to bro­ker a deal to end the months-long war and stave off a planned Is­raeli ground of­fen­sive in­to the south­ern city of Rafah.

Se­nior Hamas of­fi­cial Khalil al-Hayya gave no de­tails of Is­rael’s of­fer but said it was in re­sponse to a pro­pos­al from Hamas two weeks ago. Ne­go­ti­a­tions ear­li­er this month cen­tred on a six-week cease-fire pro­pos­al and the re­lease of 40 civil­ian and sick hostages in ex­change for free­ing hun­dreds of Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers in Is­raeli jails.

Hamas’ state­ment came hours af­ter a high-lev­el Egypt­ian del­e­ga­tion wrapped up a vis­it to Is­rael where it dis­cussed a “new vi­sion” for a pro­longed cease-fire in Gaza, ac­cord­ing to an Egypt­ian of­fi­cial, who spoke on con­di­tion of anonymi­ty to freely dis­cuss the de­vel­op­ments.

It wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly clear whether Is­rael’s new pro­pos­al was di­rect­ly re­lat­ed to Fri­day’s vis­it by Egypt­ian me­di­a­tors.

The dis­cus­sions be­tween Egypt­ian and Is­raeli of­fi­cials fo­cused on the first stage of a mul­ti-phase plan that would in­clude a lim­it­ed ex­change of hostages held by Hamas for Pales­tin­ian pris­on­ers, and the re­turn of a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of dis­placed Pales­tini­ans to their homes in north­ern Gaza “with min­i­mum re­stric­tions,” the Egypt­ian of­fi­cial said.

The me­di­a­tors are work­ing on a com­pro­mise that will an­swer most of both par­ties’ main de­mands, which could pave the way to con­tin­ued ne­go­ti­a­tions with the goal of a larg­er deal to end the war, the of­fi­cial said.

There has been grow­ing in­ter­na­tion­al pres­sure for Hamas and Is­rael to reach an agree­ment on a cease-fire and avert a pos­si­ble Is­raeli at­tack on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 mil­lion peo­ple have sought refuge af­ter flee­ing fight­ing else­where in the ter­ri­to­ry.

Is­rael has been in­sist­ing for months it plans a ground of­fen­sive in­to Rafah, on the bor­der with Egypt, where it says many re­main­ing Hamas mil­i­tants are holed up, de­spite calls for re­straint from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in­clud­ing Is­rael’s staunchest al­ly, the Unit­ed States.

Egypt has cau­tioned an of­fen­sive in­to Rafah could have “cat­a­stroph­ic con­se­quences” on the hu­man­i­tar­i­an sit­u­a­tion in Gaza, where famine is feared, as well as on re­gion­al peace and se­cu­ri­ty.

The Is­raeli mil­i­tary has massed dozens of tanks and ar­moured ve­hi­cles in south­ern Is­rael close to Rafah and hit lo­ca­tions in the city in near-dai­ly airstrikes.

Ear­ly Sat­ur­day, an Is­raeli airstrike hit a house in Rafah’s Tel Sul­tan neigh­bour­hood, killing a man, his wife and their three sons, ages 12, 10 and 8, ac­cord­ing to records of the Abu Yousef al-Na­j­jar hos­pi­tal’s morgue. A neigh­bour’s 4-month-old girl was al­so killed, the records showed.

Ahmed Omar rushed with oth­er near­by res­i­dents to the house af­ter the 1:30 a.m. strike to look for sur­vivors but said they on­ly found bod­ies and body parts.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said.

Five peo­ple were al­so killed in the Nu­seirat refugee camp in cen­tral Gaza overnight when an Is­raeli strike hit a house, ac­cord­ing to of­fi­cials at the al-Aqsa Mar­tyrs Hos­pi­tal.

Else­where, Is­raeli forces shot and killed two Pales­tin­ian men in an ex­change of fire at a check­point in the Is­raeli-oc­cu­pied West Bank, the mil­i­tary said. It said the men were killed af­ter they opened fire from a ve­hi­cle at troops sta­tioned at Salem check­point near the Pales­tin­ian city of Jenin.

Vi­o­lence in the West Bank has flared since the war start­ed. Since then, 491 Pales­tini­ans have been killed by Is­raeli fire in the ter­ri­to­ry, ac­cord­ing to the Ra­mal­lah-based Health Min­istry.

Wash­ing­ton has been crit­i­cal of Is­raeli poli­cies in the West Bank, and U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken, who is ex­pect­ed in Is­rael on Tues­day, re­cent­ly de­ter­mined an army unit com­mit­ted rights abus­es there be­fore the war in Gaza.

But Blinken said in an un­dat­ed let­ter to U.S. House Speak­er Mike John­son, ob­tained by The As­so­ci­at­ed Press on Fri­day, that he’s post­pon­ing a de­ci­sion on block­ing aid to the unit to give Is­rael more time to right the wrong­do­ing.

Blinken stressed in the let­ter that over­all Amer­i­can mil­i­tary sup­port for Is­rael’s de­fense against Hamas and oth­er threats wouldn’t be af­fect­ed by the U.S. State De­part­ment’s even­tu­al de­ci­sion on the unit.

The U.S. has al­so been build­ing a pier to de­liv­er aid to Gaza through a new port, which an of­fi­cial said last week was on track to start op­er­at­ing by ear­ly May.

The Biden ad­min­is­tra­tion has stressed there will be no Amer­i­can boots on the ground for the mis­sion. How­ev­er, the BBC re­port­ed Sat­ur­day that the U.K. gov­ern­ment was con­sid­er­ing de­ploy­ing troops to dri­ve the trucks to car­ry the aid to shore, cit­ing uniden­ti­fied gov­ern­ment sources. British of­fi­cials de­clined to com­ment on the re­port.

Hamas said Fri­day that it was open to any “ideas or sug­ges­tions” that take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion the needs of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. The group has said it won’t back down from de­mands for a per­ma­nent cease-fire and full with­draw­al of Is­raeli troops. Is­rael has re­ject­ed both and said that it will con­tin­ue mil­i­tary op­er­a­tions un­til Hamas is de­feat­ed and that it will re­tain a se­cu­ri­ty pres­ence in Gaza af­ter­wards.

Stu­dent protests over the war have emerged on a grow­ing num­ber of col­lege cam­pus­es in the U.S., while demon­stra­tions con­tin­ue in many coun­tries.

Hamas sparked the war with its at­tack in­to south­ern Is­rael on Oct. 7, in which mil­i­tants killed around 1,200 peo­ple, most­ly civil­ians, and took around 250 hostages. Is­rael says the mil­i­tants still hold around 100 hostages and the re­mains of more than 30 oth­ers.

More than 34,000 Pales­tini­ans have been killed in Is­rael’s air and ground of­fen­sive, ac­cord­ing to the Health Min­istry in Hamas-run Gaza, around two-thirds of them chil­dren and women. Its count doesn’t dis­tin­guish be­tween civil­ians and com­bat­ants. The min­istry said that 32 peo­ple killed in Is­raeli strikes had been brought to lo­cal hos­pi­tals over the past 24 hours.

Is­rael blames Hamas for civil­ian ca­su­al­ties, ac­cus­ing it of em­bed­ding in res­i­den­tial ar­eas. Is­rael has re­port­ed at least 260 sol­diers killed since the start of ground op­er­a­tions.

David Ris­ing re­port­ed from Bangkok. Jack Jef­fery in Jerusalem, and Dan­i­ca Kir­ka in Lon­don, con­tributed to this re­port.

CAIRO (AP) —