The United States has conveyed to the Hamas terror group a new set of principles for a comprehensive deal to end the war in Gaza, the Kan public broadcaster reported Sunday.

Days earlier, Israel began striking high-rise buildings in Gaza City ahead of a major operation there, which the IDF assesses could take up to a year, with goals that fall short of defeating Hamas, according to reports on Sunday.

The takeover plan has raised fears for the hostages still in Gaza, with the families of two captives seen in a Hamas propaganda video Friday saying they think their loved ones were recently moved to the city.

According to the Kan report, the US presented Hamas with a hostage deal proposal that, while not fully fleshed out, outlines a set of principles for future negotiations.

The report said the proposal was conveyed to the terror group via Gershon Baskin, a key Israeli negotiator in the deal that led to the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011 in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian terror convicts.

Channel 12 reported that Baskin, who is in contact with senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad, received the proposal from US President Donald Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff.

In an apparent about-face after months of negotiations for a partial deal, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly declared that he will now entertain only a comprehensive deal that would see the release of all 48 hostages held in Gaza.

The terror group, which has ruled Gaza for almost two decades, released a statement on Saturday saying it “affirms its openness to any ideas or proposals that achieve a permanent ceasefire, a full withdrawal of the occupation forces from the Gaza Strip, the unconditional entry of aid, and a genuine prisoner exchange through serious negotiations mediated by third parties.”

Before that, a report indicated that the group had sent a delegation to Cairo for talks amid apparent stepped-up efforts to jumpstart negotiations, and Witkoff held talks with officials from Egypt and Qatar about a potential deal.

After the terror group’s announcement, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum again demanded that Netanyahu immediately dispatch negotiators for talks on a deal.

“Tonight’s Hamas statement once again highlights the severe shortsightedness of the Israeli government. Three weeks have already passed, and Israel has yet to respond to Hamas’s updated reply to the mediators,” a statement from the forum read.

The terror group said last month that it was willing to agree to a proposal for a 60-day truce freeing around half of the hostages under terms previously accepted by Israel, but Jerusalem has yet to respond to that offer, instead pushing ahead with plans for a wide-scale military offensive in Gaza City. Hamas also said it was open to a comprehensive deal that would end the war and see all the hostages released.

The Forum accused Netanyahu of refusing the deal for political reasons, perpetuating “an endless war whose purpose is to preserve the coalition.”

“We demand that the Israeli government accept the agreement currently on the table — to which Hamas has already responded positively — and immediately begin negotiations for a comprehensive deal to return everyone, down to the last hostage,” the statement read.

The renewed efforts to reach a deal came as Israeli forces began the first stages of an operation to take over Gaza City in the northern Strip, a dense area where some million residents have been sheltering, and which includes neighborhoods the Israel Defense Forces have thus far avoided fighting in, to avoid harming hostages believed to be held there.

Over the weekend, the IDF struck several high-rise buildings in Gaza City after issuing evacuation warnings, saying it was targeting locations used to surveil or fire on IDF troops.

The strikes were also intended as signals to the local population to take evacuation warnings seriously, Channel 12 reported. According to the IDF’s assessments, however, only about 90,000 residents have left the city thus far, the network reported, adding that this is not a large enough number in the eyes of the security establishment, which may move to ramp up attacks on large structures in the coming days.

Meanwhile, in the southern Strip — where residents of Gaza City have been told to evacuate to — a new humanitarian area providing food and medical services was opened in the Khan Younis area.

Although the military has demanded the mass evacuation of civilians in order to proceed with the fighting, the IDF is also expecting, according to the Ynet news site, some 10,000 Hamas fighters to escape the combat zone amid the masses of civilians moving south, as has occurred during previous evacuations.

According to the report, the security establishment has considered trying to screen all of those leaving in order to detain as many combatants as possible — but in addition to the basic difficulty of identifying them among the masses, the military is also wary of exposing soldiers, as well as Gazan civilians, to potential attacks by operatives during the process.

Though Hamas fighters are expected to escape south, Ynet reported IDF concerns that the terror group will smuggle living hostages into the combat zone, to put them in harm’s way or dissuade Israel from going ahead with its plan to conquer Gaza City.

The families of hostages Alon Ohel and Guy Gilboa-Dalal — who appeared in a propaganda video released by the terror group on Friday — believe the two were recently moved to Gaza City, based on information gleaned from former hostages held alongside them, Channel 12 reported.

Security officials have warned in private forums, and anonymously to the press, that the Gaza City operation will endanger the remaining hostages, of whom only around 20 are believed to be alive, out of the 48 still held by terror groups in the Strip.

IDF Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir has reportedly urged Netanyahu and the security cabinet to take the partial deal already on the table, which Hamas said it approved.

The proposal agreed to by the terror group would see 10 living captives freed and the bodies of 18 dead captives returned, in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners and some 1,000 Gazan detainees, amid a 60-day ceasefire during which talks would be held for the release of the remaining hostages and a permanent end to the war.

Zamir was also said to have warned political leaders that the IDF cannot predict with certainty how Hamas will behave toward the hostages during the Gaza City offensive, and that it may persist in its policy of killing hostages when troops get close to the location where they are being held, as happened last summer.

The IDF chief of staff has also reportedly demanded that political leaders decide in advance what to do after the offensive is completed, warning that Israel is marching toward a full military government in the Gaza Strip without ever declaring this as a policy.

Zamir has determined, however, that the order to conquer the city is lawful and that he therefore will not resist the political decision, despite his personal opposition to it, according to Channel 12.

Amid these strategic issues, military officials were cited by Hebrew outlets over the weekend as saying that the goal of the looming operation is not, in fact, to defeat Hamas, but merely to severely degrade its infrastructure, similar to actions carried out in northern Rafah and parts of Khan Younis over the last few months.

The process of taking control of the city above-ground could be quick, reports said, claiming IDF assessments of only a week or two. The challenging part, however, will be locating and destroying Hamas infrastructure, including miles of tunnels underneath the city, in some of which hostages are believed to be held.

Zamir assessed this could take many months, or even about a year, according to Ynet. After Gaza City, the IDF may continue to parts of central Gaza where it also has not operated thus far to avoid harming the hostages.

Hebrew media said the IDF is preparing for the possibility that Hamas will concentrate its efforts on the sparser forces in the center and south of the Strip, amid the military focus on Gaza City. There were also reports of concern that Hamas will attack along the border fence, in an effort to thwart, or at least disrupt, the takeover plan.

On Sunday morning, two rockets were fired at Israel from Gaza, the first such incident in some three weeks.

One rocket was intercepted and the second struck an open area, according to the IDF. There were no reports of injuries.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group — a Hamas ally in the war with Israel — claimed responsibility for the attack.

The war in Gaza began on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 64,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 onslaught.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 460. The toll includes two police officers and three Defense Ministry civilian contractors.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.