US and Egypt ‘hopeful’ of Gaza ceasefire as negotiators meet
Egypt, Qatar and the US have been trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and the Hamas group for months
JERUSALEM: United States top diplomat Antony Blinken said on Monday he was “hopeful” Hamas would accept the latest proposal for a long-sought Gaza truce and hostage release deal as negotiators from the Palestinian group were due in Egypt.
Egypt, Qatar and the US have been trying to mediate an agreement between Israel and Hamas for months, and a recent flurry of diplomacy appeared to suggest a new push towards halting the fighting.
Talks “are taking place in Cairo today”, said Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence services.
It was not clear whether the Hamas delegation had already arrived, but Qatari mediators were also in Cairo according to a source with knowledge of the talks.
A senior Hamas official said on Sunday the Palestinian militant group had no “major issues” with the most recent truce plan.
Blinken — on his seventh visit to the region since the October 7 Hamas attack that sparked the war — told a World Economic Forum meeting in Saudi Arabia he was “hopeful” Hamas would accept a truce.
“Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel,” Blinken said, urging the group to “decide quickly”.
“I’m hopeful that they will make the right decision.”
Speaking at the same meeting, Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said “the proposal has taken into account the positions of both sides”.
While there was no “final decision” yet, Shoukry said: “We are hopeful... I hope that all will rise to the occasion.”
The war has brought the besieged Gaza Strip to the brink of famine, UN and humanitarian aid groups say, reduced much of the territory to rubble and raised fears of a wider regional conflict.
In southern Gaza, an AFP correspondent, witnesses and rescuers reported air strikes overnight on Rafah, where the majority of Gaza’s 2.4 million people have sought refuge near the border with Egypt.
At least 22 people were killed in the city, medics and the Civil Defence agency said, with witnesses telling AFP at least three houses had been hit.
‘Living in hell’
A Hamas source close to the talks has told AFP the group is keen for a deal that “guarantees a permanent ceasefire, the free return of displaced people, an acceptable deal for (a prisonerhostage) exchange and an end to the siege” in Gaza.
In Israel, protesters have demanded that the government secure the release of the 129 hostages estimated to remain in Gaza including 34 the military says are dead.
They were seized during Hamas’s October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war and resulted in the deaths of about 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 34,488 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamasrun territory.