ISRAEL AND HAMAS URGED TO END DEVASTATING GAZA WAR
▶ Growing clamour for ceasefire dominates World Economic Forum as truce talks resume in Cairo
Israel and Hamas have come under renewed pressure to agree to a truce in Gaza as international diplomats met in Riyadh to discuss solutions to the conflict.
Indirect talks in Cairo to secure an agreement have entered a “decisive” phase, sources have told The National. The latest proposal under discussion envisages an initial truce and a phased hostage swap.
Israel has reportedly agreed to a “second phase” that includes a period of sustained calm lasting up to a year.
Global leaders and diplomats urged both sides to accept the deal, as the war in Gaza topped the agenda at the World Economic Forum in Riyadh.
Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry said the proposal had “taken into account the positions of both sides”.
“I hope that all will rise to the occasion,” he added.
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan welcomed the progress, but said that “any ceasefire deal must be a permanent ceasefire”.
The only long-term solution to the conflict would be a “credible, irreversible pathway to a Palestinian state”, he added.
British Foreign Secretary David Cameron called for pressure on Hamas to accept the deal, which he described as a “pretty generous offer”.
“I hope Hamas do take this deal, and frankly all the pressure in the world and all the eyes of the world should be on them today, saying ‘take that deal’,” Lord Cameron said.
“It will bring about this stop in the fighting that we all want to see so badly.”
The leadership of Hamas “must leave Gaza” to secure “a political future for the Palestinian people and security for Israel”, Lord Cameron added.
Also in Riyadh for the WEF was US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Prince Faisal for talks on the war in Gaza and the possible normalisation of Saudi-Israeli diplomatic relations.
Mr Blinken said the latest
truce proposal was “extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel” and urged Hamas to “decide quickly”.
The US has also been putting pressure on Israel to accept an agreement. Hours before delegations from Israel and Hamas arrived in Cairo, US President Joe Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to review the “continuing talks to secure the release of hostages together with an immediate ceasefire in Gaza”, the White House said.
As well as pushing for a ceasefire, the US has repeatedly warned the Israeli government against going ahead with a planned incursion into Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, where more than a million displaced people have sought shelter.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said the operation is necessary if Israel is to achieve its war aim of completely destroying Hamas.
Speaking at the WEF, Jordan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Ayman Safadi said that Mr Netanyahu “doesn’t want peace”, and added that Israel has not acted as a “partner” to the Arab world.
“We, as Arabs, know what we want and what we can do … but we do not have a partner [in Israel],” he said.
“What’s missing is what Israel needs to do and what the international community needs to do.”
WEF president Borge Brende said Gaza was the global priority, as it “has the potential
Mousa Abu Marzouk of Hamas said that a delegation will attend a China-sponsored meeting with Fatah
of escalating conflicts so much in the region”.
“There is much more pressure now for a political path and the future two-state solution than I have seen, maybe, in decades,” he told The National.
Failure to reach an agreement could result in the leadership of Hamas being expelled from Qatar, where the talks are expected to move after two days in Cairo.
Sources told The National that Qatari mediators had made thinly veiled warnings to the group’s Doha-based leaders that they would be asked to leave if they did not show flexibility during the truce negotiations.
Mousa Abu Marzouk, a member of Hamas’s politburo, told Iranian Al Alam TV that reports the group could be expelled from Doha were “false”.
However, he added, if the group’s leaders do have to leave Qatar, their intention would be to move to Jordan.
He said that a Hamas delegation would travel to China in the coming days for direct talks with Fatah, the dominant faction of the Palestinian Authority, about the future of the Palestinian cause.