The Latest | Cease-fire talks expected to resume this week as Hamas appears to soften demands

Talks on a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip are expected to resume this week, with several officials saying the devastation caused by Israel's nine-month offensive likely helped push Hamas to soften its demands.

Hamas over the weekend appeared to drop its longstanding demand that Israel promise to end the war as part of any cease-fire deal. The sudden shift has raised new hopes for progress in the internationally brokered negotiations.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday boasted that military pressure — including Israel’s ongoing two-month offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah — “is what has led Hamas to enter negotiations.”

Netanyahu’s office said a team of Israeli negotiators will resume talks this week on a cease-fire with Hamas which had been stalled for weeks, signaling progress toward a deal to end the war in Gaza. But it said “there are still gaps between the parties.”

Hamas wants an agreement that ensures Israeli troops fully leave Gaza and that the war ends, while Israel says it cannot halt the war before the Palestinian militant group is eliminated. Postwar governance and security control of the enclave have also been contentious issues.

Israel launched the war in Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, in which militants stormed into southern Israel, killed some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducted about 250.

Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,000 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.

The war has caused massive devastation across the besieged territory and displaced most of its 2.3 million people, often multiple times. Israeli restrictions,