Give us peace..

AFTER two years of a brutal war that has reduced much of Gaza to rubble, peace may be on the horizon - and it cannot come quickly enough for thousands of innocent civilians caught up in the hell of battle.

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But as negotiators yesterday tried to thrash out a deal in the comfort of separate meeting rooms, the brutality of conflict continued with missiles raining down and the death toll rising.

Today marks the second anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks in Israel that sparked this bloody conflict and has so far left more than 67,000 Palestinians dead.

Gazans, along with those on the other side mourning or awaiting news of hostages taken by Hamas in that horrific raid, are desperate for the killing and mayhem to stop.

Their hopes now lie with a 20-point plan brokered by Donald Trump.

But as Israel and Hamas, under pressure from the US, opened indirect talks in Egypt yesterday, reporters watched bombs slam into besieged Gaza City, while the sound of heavy machine gun fire peppered the smoke-filled air.

We witnessed one of the most violent days of the war as Israel tried to kill as many Hamas fighters as possible. The militant group and their Palestinian Islamic Jihad comrades were trying to do exactly the same to the Israeli Defence Forces.

In 24 hours, at least 64 Palestinians died.

An Israeli soldier moved us on from our vantage point on Camel Hill, near the Israeli town of Sderot on the Gaza border.

He told us: "It's all talk. I cannot see a peace deal. The fighting will end in us taking Gaza. Hamas will lose." Between us on Sderot hill and the fields leading into Gaza, Israeli traffic zoomed by as locals went about their daily business despite the war raging just a few hundred yards beyond them.

A key part of the peace plan is Israel suspending its military operations to pave the way for the hostages to be released.