Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo to be briefed on progress in peace talks. But an official from the group said it would not participate directly in the negotiations, which it has boycotted for the past 10 days.
Hamas representatives are expected to arrive in the Egyptian capital on Saturday (8/24). Negotiators from Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar are holding talks on an elusive deal that would involve the release of Israeli hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire.
The delegation was confirmed in a statement by senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq. But another Hamas official, who was not named, said Hamas representatives would not take part in the talks.
A sticking point in the current negotiations is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that any peace deal must allow for an Israeli presence along the Egypt-Gaza border, a strip of land known as the Philadelphia corridor, and on the road that bisects the two countries, the Gaza Strip, the Netzarim corridor.
Hamas has rejected the presence. It runs counter to a three-phase peace plan announced by Joe Biden in late May and later endorsed by the UN security council that envisions an eventual full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas said it accepted the deal, but was boycotting the current round of talks on the grounds that the proposal had been fundamentally changed and rejected US claims that it had withdrawn from the accord.
Read also: Biden Talks to Qatar, Egypt on Gaza Ceasefire
The White House has insisted that the peace plan outlined by Biden has been accepted by Israel, but Netanyahu has repeatedly questioned the terms and vowed that his government will continue the war until Hamas is completely eliminated.
Netanyahu insists that Israel’s presence in the Philadelphia corridor is essential to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas from Egypt. However, the government of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Cairo argues that it has taken strict measures against smuggling and cross-border smuggling tunnels and that Israel’s presence would raise questions about Egypt’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Following a visit to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the US claimed to have secured Israel’s agreement to reach a compromise solution that Hamas has been pushing for. But it has so far not released details of what it claims is the proposed bridging deal.
Read also: Ceasefire Still Stalled as Blinken Leaves Middle East
The US is represented in the Cairo talks by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns and US special envoy for the region Brett McGurk. Israel’s main negotiators are the directors of the Mossad spy agency and the Shin Bet security agency, David Barnea and Ronen Bar. Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani is expected to arrive in Cairo on Saturday (8/24).
As talks continue in Cairo, Israel is pressing ahead with its military campaign, now in its 11th month, sparked by a surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed nearly 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza but many are feared dead.
According to Gaza health authorities, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s retaliatory military campaign. Fifty Palestinians were killed by Israeli gunfire in Gaza on Saturday alone.
Read also: Israel-Hamas Ready to Renew Negotiations, UN Warns of Famine in Gaza
In recent weeks, Israel has issued a growing number of evacuation orders against Palestinians in Gaza. Nearly all of the Palestinians have been displaced several times by the offensive and live in makeshift camps.
Many Palestinians sheltering in areas previously identified by Israel as humanitarian zones have been ordered to leave this month, leaving the refugee population crammed into a shrinking area with minimal food and water supplies.
Health conditions continue to deteriorate. The World Health Organization (WHO) has confirmed Gaza’s first case of polio in more than a quarter of a century, a baby partially paralyzed by the virus, but is said to be in stable condition.
While the U.S. and its regional allies have tried to keep negotiations going to stop the bloodshed in Gaza, there are signs that the conflict has the capacity to spread across the region. Iran’s ally Hezbollah trades daily fire with Israeli forces on the Lebanon-Israel border and violence is rising in the West Bank, fueled largely by extremist Israeli settlers.
Bar described settler attacks on Palestinians as terrorism and a major threat to Israel’s national security, due to their potential to incite violence.
On Saturday (24/8) afternoon, local media reported that two Israeli men were missing in the West Bank city of Qalqilya. “Attempts by Israeli soldiers to rescue them were met with roadside bombs and gunfire,” the report said. The fate of the two missing men remained unclear as of Saturday (24/8) evening. (The Guardian/Z-2)
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