Gaza ceasefire talks make good progress
EGYPTIAN MEDIA REPORTS HEADWAY IN CONTENTIOUS POINTS OF AGREEMENT
TSenior Israeli officials said progress has been made in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza that would include the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners.
alks in Cairo aimed at brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip have made “significant progress”, Egyptian outlet Al-Qahera reported yesterday.
The state-linked outlet reported “significant progress being made on several contentious points of agreement”, citing a high-ranking Egyptian source.
Two Egyptian security sources said both sides had made concessions that could help pave the way for a deal for a truce which — as proposed during previous talks — would be staggered over three stages, with the release of any remaining Israeli hostages and a long-term ceasefire addressed in the second stage.
Getting closer
Egypt, Qatar and key Israeli ally the United States have mediated previous rounds of negotiations, but a workable agreement to end the six-month war has remained elusive. Al-Qahera reported that Qatari and Hamas delegations had left Cairo and were expected to return “within two days to finalise the terms of the agreement”. US and Israeli delegations were due to leave the Egyptian capital “in the next few hours” and consultations were expected to continue over the next 48 hours, the outlet added.
Senior Israeli officials said progress has been made in negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza that would include the release of hostages and Palestinian prisoners, a move that drew criticism from far-right ministers who threatened to bring down the government. “We’ve reached a critical point,” Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Army Radio yesterday. “If matters work out, a large number of hostages will return home and then, in stages, everyone. But remember that we are dealing with Hamas and there is not a lot of time. I am more optimistic than I was.”
Safa Qandil returned home to Khan Younis in southern Gaza yesterday only to find she no longer has one. Thousands of displaced Gazans have been trudging back through the apocalyptic landscape of the devastated city after the Israeli army pulled out on Sunday following months of fierce fighting with Hamas militants.
But as often as not to find their home is no longer there.
“We hoped we would find the house or the remnants of it or take something from it to cover us,” Qandil, 46, told AFP.
“We did not find the house,” she said.
‘It is indescribable’
That is not, however, the worst of her loss. Her son and his pregnant wife were killed by the Israeli armyd.
“My tragedy is great,” she said, adding that the army also killed her daughter-in-law’s “father, brother, sister, aunt and the rest of her family in a very heinous crime.”
“It is unnatural and indescribable,” she said.
“In every house, there is a martyr (someone dead), a wounded person, words cannot describe the magnitude of the devastation and the suffering we experienced. “We cried hysterically at the sight of the blood.”
Such is the destruction of the city that many residents returning from neighbouring Rafah, where more than 1.5 million Gazans have been sheltering, have struggled to find their way around.
“We don’t recognise places, because nothing looks the same,” said Salim Sharab.
Others told AFP that the smell of death hangs in the air, with people digging bodies from the rubble.
The city’s civil defence appealed to the United Nations yesterday for hydraulic equipment to get to the bodies, most of which they say are decomposed.
Sharab was still holding onto the hope that his home had survived the fighting and bombardment that levelled whole swathes of a city that was once home to nearly 400,000.
Such was the 37-year-old’s longing to return, “even if my house is destroyed, I will set up my tent on top of it,” he said.
‘There is nothing left’
Aisha Al-Hoor’s hopes have already been dashed. “My house was completely destroyed and is rubble. My heart was consumed with pain, in every corner of my house there were memories ... the scale of the devastation is indescribable. The army left nothing intact for the people,” she said. “The anger and pain in our hearts will never be forgotten.”
Mohammad Abu Diab said he was in shock. “There is nothing left. I cannot bear the sight. I’m going to my house and I know it’s destroyed,” said the 29-year-old.
“I’m going to look in the rubble until I find clothes to wear. I’ll go back and live next to the rubble of my house even if it’s in a tent. We are exhausted.”
The Gaza war was sparked by the October-7 attack against Israel by Hamas militants that resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, Israeli figures show.
Israel’s offensive killed at least 33,207 people in Gaza, according to the health ministry.