The group's aim remains an "end to this war", senior Hamas official Suhail al-Hindi told AFP -- a goal at odds with the stated position of Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Netanyahu has vowed to send Israeli ground forces into Gaza's far-southern city of Rafah, despite major concerns over the fate of some 1.5 million civilians sheltering there.

"We will enter Rafah and we will eliminate the Hamas battalions there with or without a deal," Netanyahu said this week.

Hamas official Hindi, speaking by phone from an undisclosed location, said there is "great interest from Hamas and all Palestinian resistance factions to end this insane war on the Palestinian people, which has consumed everything".

"But it will not be at any cost," he added, stressing that the group "cannot under any circumstances raise the white flag or surrender to the conditions of the Israeli enemy".

 Top US diplomat Antony Blinken has urged Hamas to accept a Gaza truce plan.

Mediators have proposed a truce deal that would halt fighting for 40 days and exchange dozens of captives for many more Palestinian prisoners.

Hamas has said it will respond "within a very short period" to the proposal.

"Hamas needs to say yes and needs to get this done," Blinken said Wednesday while in Israel on his seventh Middle East crisis tour since the war broke out in October.

He later added: "If Hamas actually purports to care about the Palestinian people and wants to see an immediate alleviation of their suffering, it should take this deal."

'Sustainable calm'

Talks on a potential truce and captive release deal to pause the bloodiest ever Gaza war have been held in Cairo, involving US, Egyptian and Qatari mediators.

Egypt's Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry called on all sides to "show the necessary flexibility" to achieve a deal "that stops the bloodshed of Palestinians", during a visit to Cairo by his French counterpart Stephane Sejourne.

Analysts doubted that Hamas would sign up to another temporary ceasefire, knowing that Israeli troops could resume their onslaught as soon as it is over.

"I'm pessimistic about the option of Hamas agreeing to a deal that doesn't have a permanent ceasefire baked into it," said Mairav Zonszein, senior analyst at the International Crisis Group.