Hamas in Cairo for truce talks
Talks were expected to resume in Egypt yesterday with the aim of halting months of war in Gaza between Hamas militants and Israel that have triggered widening protests around the world.
Mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the United States have been waiting for the Palestinian Islamist movement to respond to a proposal that, according to details released by Britain, would halt fighting for 40 days and exchange hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
“All delegations have now arrived in Egypt and the first round of negotiations will begin with the presence of all Qatari, Egyptian, and even American delegations,” a senior Hamas official, not authorised to talk publicly, told AFP anonymously.
Months of negotiations stalled in part on Hamas’s demand for a lasting ceasefire and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated vows to crush the group’s remaining fighters in Rafah, along the Egyptian border in Gaza’s far south.
The prospect of a Rafah invasion, threatened for three months alongside stop-start truce talks, has sparked intensifying global alarm.
After a meeting in Cairo about a week ago, the Hamas delegation returned to Qatar, where its chief Ismail Haniyeh is based, to discuss the truce proposal.
“There is significant progress in the negotiations
The war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel has carried out a retaliatory campaign of bombardment and fighting on the ground that has killed at least 34,654 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to the Hamasrun territory’s health ministry.
Gaza’s Civil Defence agency and hospitals reported several more deaths from strikes in Gaza’s north, centre, and in Rafah.
The United Nations says more than 70 per cent of Gaza’s residential buildings have been completely or partly destroyed, and rebuilding will require an effort unseen since World War II.
Accepting a ceasefire deal with Israel should be a “nobrainer” for Hamas, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said late on Friday.
“The reality in this moment is the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas,” Blinken said.
The World Health Organisation says 1.2 million people, half of Gaza’s population, have sought refuge in Rafah. Aid groups say an invasion would only add to an existing humanitarian catastrophe.
On Friday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus expressed deep concern “that a full-scale military operation in Rafah, Gaza, could lead to a bloodbath”.
Jens Laerke, spokesman for the UN humanitarian agency OCHA, said a military operation in Rafah could “strike a disastrous blow” to agencies struggling to provide aid.
Al-Qahera News, linked to Egyptian intelligence services, quoted an unnamed highranking source as saying “there is significant progress in the negotiations” and that the Egyptian mediators have “reached an agreed-upon formula on most points of contention”.