US Secretary of State Antony Blinken disembarks off his aircraft upon arrival at Ben Gurion International Airport on February 2024.AFP
The diplomat was due to meet Israel's leaders as part of a Middle East crisis tour after earlier stops in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Qatar.
Qatar, which mediated a temporary ceasefire earlier in the conflict, said Hamas had given a response to a new proposed deal to pause the fighting.
"The reply includes some comments, but in general it is positive," Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani said after meeting Blinken in Doha.
Blinken said Hamas's reply had been "shared" with Israel and he would discuss it there on Wednesday.
He also said there was still "a lot of work to be done" but that he believed "that an agreement is possible and indeed essential".
Israel's spy agency Mossad also received the Hamas response, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said, and "its details are being thoroughly evaluated".
Netanyahu, who has yet to comment directly on the response, said on Tuesday: "We are on the way to total victory and we will not stop."
Pressure for a ceasefire has mounted as Israeli forces push towards the town of Rafah on Gaza's southern border with Egypt, where more than half the besieged territory's population has taken shelter.
"To be clear, intensified hostilities in Rafah in this situation could lead to large-scale loss of civilian lives, and we must do everything possible within our power to avoid that," said Jens Laerke, spokesperson for the UN aid coordination office OCHA.
'Children scared all the time'
The Israeli war on Gaza has devastated swathes of the Strip, destroyed hospitals and displaced more than half of its population of 2.4 million, while food, water, fuel, and medicine are in dire shortage.
"The humanitarian situation in the Gaza Strip is beyond catastrophic," said Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
Israeli troops, with air and naval support, have been engaged in heavy combat centered on Gaza's main southern city of Khan Yunis.
Around 8,000 displaced people had been evacuated from the besieged Al-Amal hospital in Khan Yunis, where they had sought refuge, after weeks of heavy shelling and fighting nearby, according to the Red Cross.
The Palestinian health ministry said at least 100 people were killed overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday.
Israel has warned it could also push on into Rafah, the last place of refuge for many Palestinians fleeing the fighting.
The army "will reach places where we have not yet fought... right up to the last Hamas bastion, which is Rafah", Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said earlier this week.
Safia Marouf, sheltering in Rafah with her family after being uprooted from their home further north, said she is afraid of what is to come.
"The children are scared all the time, and if we want to leave Rafah, we don't know where to go. What will be our destiny and that of our children?"
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