White House: Gaza ceasefire talks to continue in Cairo

WASHINGTON – White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed Monday that ongoing negotiations in Cairo to reach a ceasefire in Gaza and an agreement on hostages will continue at the working group level over the next few days to resolve some specific issues.

Speaking to reporters in an online briefing, Kirby rejected suggestions that the talks had broken down and said they were on the contrary “constructive.”

“The talks have already progressed to a point where they felt the next logical step was to form working groups at lower levels to sit down to work out these finer details,” Kirby added.

He added that Brett McGurk, US President Joe Biden’s senior advisor for Middle East affairs and a participant in the talks, will leave Cairo soon after staying an additional day to start the working group talks.

Kirby said that one of the issues that the working groups will address is the exchange of hostages held by Palestinian factions and Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

He added that the details to be settled include the number of hostages and detainees who might be exchanged, their identities and the pace of their possible release.

Months of on-and-off talks have failed to produce an agreement to end Israel’s military campaign in Gaza or release the remaining hostages held by Palestinian factions in an Oct. 7 attack on Israel that sparked the latest war in the territory.

The latest round of negotiations took place amid the risk of regional escalation, with Lebanese militant groups firing hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel on Sunday, and the Israeli military saying it had struck Lebanon with about 100 aircraft to thwart a larger attack.

But Kirby said the cross-border fighting had no impact on the talks.

The main points of contention in the ongoing talks mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar include the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a narrow 14.5-kilometer strip along the southern border of the Gaza Strip with Egypt.

“There is still progress, and our team on the ground continues to describe the talks as constructive,” Kirby said.

Palestinian faction leader Taher Al-Nono reiterated to the Qatari Al Jazeera Mubasher channel on Monday that the American statements regarding the status of the ceasefire talks are not consistent with the truth and aim to support the positions of the “occupation.”

The movement said in a statement on Sunday that talk of an imminent agreement was false.

Two Egyptian sources said on Sunday that Israel had expressed reservations about a number of Palestinian detainees whose release the Palestinian factions were demanding, and Israel demanded that they leave Gaza if they were released.

More than 40,400 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to Gaza’s health ministry. Humanitarian agencies say most of the territory’s 2.3 million people have been displaced multiple times and face severe shortages of food and medicine.

Reuters