‘Nowhere and no one is safe in Gaza’: Israeli strike kills 7 in Khan Younis

Al Jazeera is reporting from outside Israel because it has been banned by the Israeli government..

Israeli officials say they are approaching the latest round of ceasefire talks with cautious optimism.

That is a theme that we have seen throughout the entirety of these negotiations since the beginning of the year and, in fact, the end of last year, when we saw the first and only ceasefire deal.

Breaking down what exactly has happened: At the end of May, the Israelis gave mediators what they wanted as part of a ceasefire deal.

On May 31, US President Joe Biden laid out a three-phase plan that would ultimately see the end of the war.

The following month, on June 11, Hamas submitted their response to that proposal. But it was later slammed by both the Americans and the Israelis. They said that Hamas had removed key parts of the deal that would not work for the Israelis.

The Israelis have now released a statement saying they are considering and looking through Hamas’s latest response to the proposal.

All of this comes as there has been mounting pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from the families of Israeli captives who say that if this deal does not happen, millions of Israelis will take to the streets to once again protest his leadership.

They say that he is neither capable nor willing to come to the table and come up with some sort of consensus as to how to bring back the remaining 120 captives in Gaza.

They say that the timing now is critical.