AMY GOODMAN: We begin today’s show with Gaza ceasefire talks, which are underway after Israeli military tanks opened fire Sunday and killed at least 30 Palestinians near Rafah in southern Gaza as they were waiting for aid. More than 170 others were wounded. Israel has denied responsibility. The aid site is operated by the U.S.-Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. This is a witness named Ibrahim Abu Saud, who described the attack to Al Jazeera.

IBRAHIM ABU SAUD: [translated] They said there was aid, and we were supposed to enter at 5:30. We were advancing toward the Al-Alam roundabout near the sea, and there was a lot of gunfire. The quadcopters came and said there was no aid today. At 6:00, the tanks were firing, but no one was doing anything to the Israelis.

AMY GOODMAN: Soon we’ll go to Gaza to talk more about the attack with a doctor who treated survivors and with a local NGO coordinator, but first we get an update on how negotiations are continuing over a possible ceasefire.

Over the weekend, Hamas submitted its response to a proposal by U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. Hamas is offering to release 10 living hostages and 18 bodies in return for Israel’s release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas is also seeking a complete end to Israel’s war on Gaza and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, but Witkoff has called Hamas’s response “totally unacceptable.”

Meanwhile, in the United States, authorities in Boulder, Colorado, have arrested a man accused of using a makeshift flamethrower and another incendiary device to attack a crowd of people taking part in a weekly walk honoring Israeli hostages in Gaza. Eight people were injured with burns, at least one in critical condition. The FBI said the attack is being investigated as an act of terrorism.

For more, we’re joined in London by Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, a former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

Daniel, welcome back to Democracy Now! First, if you can talk about where the ceasefire proposal stands right now?

DANIEL LEVY: Good to be back, Amy, although the circumstances continue and worsen in terms of how dire they are.

That ceasefire diplomacy, first of all, let’s be very clear, this doesn’t have to be a partial release of the Israelis being held. That’s a modality that the Israeli side has pushed for, instead of being willing to bring a total, definitive end to this, all the Israelis living and dead out, a full cessation, full withdrawal, etc. It’s important to remember that the agreement reached at the very beginning of Trump’s term, if people cast their minds back, Israelis being held were released. There were six weeks of a largely respected — not entirely on the Israeli side — ceasefire. That arrangement was that one would segue from a first phase into subsequent phases of releases towards a permanent ceasefire. Israel broke that ceasefire. It not only broke that ceasefire, but it launched probably the most barbaric of its assaults over the ensuing weeks, if one measures that in terms of the degree of the blockade and starvation regime imposed on Gaza. Talks resumed.

Where are we? The U.S. did something which should have been obvious all along, and further shame on the Biden administration that it didn’t do this. It spoke directly through envoys to Hamas. Adam Boehler, the hostage envoy, and subsequently someone called Bishara Bahbah, has been in direct talks with the Hamas leadership conducting these talks. They apparently reached an arrangement. That arrangement was apparently then rewritten at Israel’s assistance, put American stars and stripes on it and repackaged as an American proposal put forward by Witkoff. That seems to be Witkoff playing the regular game of America putting forward Israeli positions. That’s, if you like, channeling his inner Biden or Blinken. That proposal — let’s be very clear: That proposal walks back the commitment for a permanent ceasefire, Israeli withdrawal and allowing in of humanitarian aid.

Now, given that the Israeli prime minister is basically telling us the following, that his government is telling us the following: “We can have a pause, we can get some of the Israelis back, and then we will resume our” — I’ll use the word — ’genocide.'” They don't quite say it, but they say everything that constitutes a genocide, that they will continue the ethnic cleansing, the squeezing of Palestinians into smaller areas in Gaza, the plans for resettlement, the killing, the destruction. By the way, they’re also pursuing similar goals in the West Bank. So, Netanyahu is saying, “You give us back some, and then your people can rest. Our soldiers can rest. Our troops can rest for 60-odd days. And then we’ll double down and make it even worse.” That is not a deal anyone should accept. The ball is now back in Witkoff and Netanyahu’s court. From what we’ve seen so far, one shouldn’t be hopeful. But that’s where we stand, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to what happened on Saturday in the streets of Tel Aviv, Israeli protesters demanding an immediate ceasefire and release of remaining hostages. This is Yotam Cohen, brother of hostage Nimrod Cohen.

YOTAM COHEN: We are facing moral bankruptcy. Netanyahu is abandoning our loved ones in captivity and crushing the Israeli ethos upon which we were raised, for which, for his own political motives, we are left with no other option but to turn to the United States special envoy to the Middle East. Please, Mr. Witkoff, if the hostage deal outline is accepted, place a comprehensive deal on the table immediately, one that will end the war and ensure the return of all remaining hostages. Don’t let Netanyahu torpedo this deal and resume the fighting, the fighting that will cause the living hostages their lives.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s the brother of hostage Nimrod Cohen. Also at the protest Saturday in Tel Aviv was protester Amram Zahavi.

AMRAM ZAHAVI: And usually I want to apologize to the world to be a Jew and Israeli in a country that behaves like the Germany, the Nazis at 1940. I say that Israel is now a complete copy of what happened in Germany and the atrocity and the genocide that Israel is doing in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Israeli protester Amram Zahavi. If you can respond, one, to the family member of a hostage and to these Israeli protesters in the streets? And does that put pressure on Netanyahu?

DANIEL LEVY: I wish I could tell you that it puts the requisite level of pressure on Netanyahu. So, what we have, Amy, is a situation where many of the families of the Israelis still being held, and of those who have been released already, and their supporters have taken to the streets because they have clarity on this, that the person preventing this deal — not as Witkoff tells us, Hamas, just like Blinken and Biden told us, but it’s Netanyahu who’s preventing a deal, because he wants a permanent war. You now have a former Israeli prime minister acknowledging what the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, so much of the world has acknowledged for so many months, which is that Israel is committing war crimes. This is what former Prime Minister Olmert has said. You have 1,500-plus Israeli academics who have written to the heads of the universities, saying they must distance themselves from the war crimes that Israel is committing.

In the meantime, much of the Israeli official political opposition is against Netanyahu for a variety of reasons but is not calling out the crimes that are being committed, is not opposing his war. And Netanyahu sees his best political path as continuing the war, and he also sees that this is the fulfillment of the ideological vision of trying to permanently remove the Palestinians. Israel set up a directorate. I’ll give you the name of it. It’s the Directorate for the Voluntary Emigration of Gaza Residents, headed by a colonel, Yaakov Blitstein, inside the Defense Ministry. Now, there’s nothing voluntary about trying to get rid of people when you’re starving and kettling them into ever smaller areas.

None of this would be possible if so much of the Israeli media and society was not mobilized in support of this, and none of that would be possible, Amy, if Israel wasn’t treated with impunity externally. Of course, the U.S. leads that, but beyond it, we’re now hearing words. We’re now hearing much more relevant rhetoric from Israel’s Western allies, but we’re not seeing the commensurate actions. We’re not seeing Europeans, Canadians, others imposing an arms embargo, seizing Israeli foreign assets. We’re not seeing Israel isolated from international sport. As long as there is impunity, these crimes will continue.

There are people who say, Amy, that you have this tension between America first and Israel first inside Trump world, that the kind of cultural war of Palestine-Israel fought domestically — so, what’s being done with universities, with funding, with foreign students — by the way, we, of course, see the extremely courageous and very on-point messages in some of the commencement speeches. But that domestic deployment of Israel-Palestine is a little different from the geopolitical management, where the Trump administration have not gone along with Israel’s position on Iran, on the continuing to strike the Houthis — they did, and then they stopped — on Syria sanctions. They visited — he visited the Gulf, but not Israel. So, there is — there is some cracks there. There are some divisions. Unfortunately, what you don’t have is any acknowledgment of Palestinian humanity from this administration, but it is an administration talking to Hamas that conceivably could still put forward a ceasefire plan, but that will depend on much more pressure. That’s not where they are today, and that’s not the zeitgeist that we’re seeing.

AMY GOODMAN: Very quickly, because we’re going to a doctor in Gaza, and you could imagine these hospitals are incredibly busy, I wanted to get your comment on Israel’s denial that it was involved in the killing of at least 30 Palestinians who went to get aid, who were told by quadcopters that they can go to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to get aid, and then were gunned down. Israel is saying it wasn’t them, the Israeli military, who did that. And also what happened in Boulder, this man, shirtless, with some kind of flamethrower, burning eight Americans who were standing in vigil for Israeli hostages?

DANIEL LEVY: So, let me touch on that first. Of course, any attack on people exerting their right to protest, to rally anywhere, certainly including in the U.S., including in Boulder, Colorado, that’s a criminal act. That person should have the full force of the law brought against them. There’s no question in terms of condemning what was done there. I don’t see how anyone could condemn that but think it’s OK that in another part of the world a country shoots people who are desperately trying to get some aid and starves and besieges a population of 2 million-plus civilians. So, that’s the Boulder situation.

Look, in terms of the Israeli denials, we understand that approximately 75 Palestinians have been killed in the under a week that this new authority has been functioning. I call it genocide profiteering, a private company distributing aid. Israel has denied. We’ve been here before, right, Amy? It’s not our first rodeo. Israel immediately issues its denial, comes up with some spurious counterclaim, hopes the news cycle moves on. In the end, we find out that the denials were worth precisely nothing. One has to acknowledge that the media has been banned from there. If Israel wanted to get its story out, let the media in. And if the media took itself seriously, then it would point that out — the mainstream media, I’m not talking about Democracy Now!, of course. There are citizen journalists who you can always turn to. There are people on the ground. You’re about to do that. So, there’s no credibility to that, to that claim.

But if I may, one point on this Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, so-called, there is a mechanism to get aid to the people in Gaza. It’s tried and tested. It’s through the U.N. and other aid delivery systems that work according to humanitarian principles. Israel’s claim that Hamas has been siphoning off that aid, and that’s how it stays in power, has been repeated. It’s spurious. It has not been proven. What Israel is doing here by creating these zones, by making announcements on quadcopters, by sending people across great distances in Gaza, and then shooting those people, it is a layer of cruelty that tears at the very humanity of all of us, yet another layer of cruelty. And even if the Palestinians aren’t what keeps you awake at night, we should be clear that what Israel is establishing here in terms of undermining the fundamentals of global principles of humanitarian assistance should matter to everyone, just as the way Israel has used AI — Lavender, they called it — robotics in such appalling ways in their strikes in Gaza, and just as genocidal actions and narratives have been normalized. We have to bring an end to it. You’re about to hear the horrors of what is going on on the ground. Everyone must redouble their efforts to end this. Stop genocide, end apartheid, sanctions now.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, I want to thank you for being with us, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, former Israeli peace negotiator under Prime Ministers Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.

When we come back, we go to Gaza to speak with a doctor who treated the wounded this weekend. Stay with us.

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AMY GOODMAN: “Say Goodbye” by Michael Franti in our Democracy Now! studio.