A senior Hamas official has accused Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of issuing statements intended to torpedo prospects for a truce in the nearly seven-month war in Gaza. Hossam Badran told AFP that Hamas was in the process of conducting internal dialogues within its leadership and with allied militant groups. But he warned that Netanyahu’s repeated statements insisting he will send troops into the territory’s far southern city of Rafah were calculated to “thwart any possibility of concluding an agreement”.
