Cairo, Egypt/Rafah, Gaza Strip
Reuters
Hamas and Egyptian mediators said on Monday they were pressing on with talks on securing a ceasefire in Gaza, despite Israel’s decision not to send a delegation.
The ceasefire talks, which began on Sunday in Cairo, are billed as a final hurdle on the way to securing the first extended ceasefire of the five-month-old war, in time for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, expected to begin on Sunday.
Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip on 4th March, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Mohammed Salem
Israel has declined to comment publicly on the Cairo talks. A source told Reuters it was staying away because Hamas had refused a request to list the hostages that are still alive, information that the Palestinian militants who control Gaza say they will provide only once terms are agreed.
“Talks in Cairo continue for the second day, regardless of whether the occupation’s delegation is present in Egypt,” a Hamas official told Reuters.
Two Egyptian security sources said mediators were in touch with the Israelis, allowing negotiations to continue despite their absence.
A Palestinian source close to the talks said the discussions remained “uneasy”, with Israel sticking to its demand for only a temporary truce to free hostages, while Hamas was seeking assurances that the war would not start up again.
Late on Monday, officials from Hamas, Egypt and Qatar began a second round of talks for the day, a Hamas source said.
The White House said a temporary ceasefire was essential to a hostage deal and urged Hamas to accept the terms currently on offer.
White House national security spokesperson John Kirby told reporters the United States still hoped to conclude a ceasefire-for-hostages deal by the start of Ramadan, but that Hamas had not yet agreed.
Kirby also said the United States would airdrop more humanitarian supplies into Gaza and was considering using ships. He said truck deliveries had been slowed by opposition from some members of Israel’s cabinet.
“Israel bears a responsibility here to do more,” he said, echoing unusually forceful language used at the weekend by Vice President Kamala Harris, who urged Israel to alleviate “inhumane” conditions in Gaza.
Military vehicles stand near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, in Israel, on 4th March, 2024. PICTURE: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Kamala Harris to host Netanyahu’s rival Gantz
In a sign of the strain between the Biden administration and the right-wing government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Harris was due on Monday to host Benny Gantz, a longtime political rival of Netanyahu who joined his war cabinet in a national unity pact at the war’s start. Netanyahu has not been invited to Washington since returning to office a year ago.
The proposal being discussed envisages a truce of about 40 days, during which militants would release around 40 of the more than 100 hostages they are still holding in return for some 400 detainees from Israeli jails.
Israeli troops would pull back from some areas, more humanitarian aid would be allowed into Gaza, and residents would be permitted to return to abandoned homes.
But the deal does not appear to address directly a Hamas demand for a path to a permanent end to the war. Nor does it resolve the fate of more than half the remaining hostages – Israeli men excluded from both this and earlier agreements covering women, children, the elderly and the wounded.
Israel says it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated. Hamas says it will not free all its hostages without a deal that ends the war.
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The Egyptian security sources said mediators were trying to bridge the gap with guarantees to Hamas on future peace talks, and to Israel on the safety of hostages.
A Palestinian official close to the negotiations disputed the US contention that Israel had already agreed to the deal and Hamas was holding it up, saying this appeared aimed at deflecting blame from Israel should the talks collapse.
Ramadan truce could shield Rafah from assault
The war erupted after Hamas fighters burst into Israel on 7th October, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Since then, Israel has sealed off the coastal strip, stormed most of its towns and pounded it from the sky. Palestinian authorities say more than 30,000 people have been confirmed killed and most of the population has been made homeless. The United Nations says hundreds of thousands face the prospect of famine.
A Ramadan truce could head off a threatened Israeli assault on Rafah, the last town on the southern edge of Gaza, where more than half the enclave’s population are now sheltering.
But the days leading up to it have been particularly bloody. Residents have described heavy fighting since Saturday just north of Rafah in Khan Younis, where Israeli forces have released video showing buildings obliterated in airstrikes.
In Rafah, airstrikes have been killing families in their homes nightly. At least 14 bodies were laid out at a hospital morgue in Rafah on Monday morning. One of the body bags was partially unzipped so weeping relatives could stroke the hair of a dead child.
“I woke up to people collecting bodies. I don’t remember anything,” wept Nidal al-Gharib, whose wife was among the dead.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said an Israeli strike had killed and wounded displaced Palestinians sheltering in tents in front of the Al-Emirati field hospital on Saturday, also killing two health workers.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the incident as “outrageous and unspeakable”, demanding that health workers and civilians be protected at all times.
Violence has also surged in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, where the Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule, having lost control of Gaza to Hamas in 2007.
Israeli forces launched their biggest raid for years into the PA’s administrative capital Ramallah overnight, killing a 16-year-old in a refugee camp, Palestinian sources said.
– Additional reporting by JAMES MACKENZIE in Jerusalem and JEFF MASON in Washington DC, US
