A delegation from the Palestinian group Hamas has landed in Cairo on Saturday evening to “listen to the results of negotiations thus far” between mediators – Egypt, Qatar and the United States – and Israel.
Observers are reluctant to call this a hopeful sign as conviction grows that Gaza ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel are on the verge of collapse.
Negotiations of some form or another have been ongoing practically since October 7, the day Israel launched a war on Gaza that has killed more than 40,000 people and destroyed most of the Strip – ostensibly in retribution for a Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed 1,139 people and took more than 200 captive.
An agreement had seemed close in May when the US said it had a draft proposal approved by all parties and endorsed by the UN Security Council on June 10.
Eleventh-hour failures
Hamas agreed to the proposal, emphasising that it wanted the Israeli army out of Gaza, the return of people to their north Gaza homes that they had been driven out of, international engagement to rebuild Gaza, and the release of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Israeli officials kept making statements indicating that the war on Gaza must continue – and the Israeli army invaded Rafah.
Yet the US maintained that Israel had accepted the proposal and the stumbling block was Hamas, which was holding up all progress.
With a ceasefire agreement seemingly in arm’s reach, it disappeared.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintained his rhetoric of continuing to fight until “Hamas is completely defeated in Gaza”, a goal long called out as unrealistic by parties on both sides.
There has been one short pause since Israel began its war on Gaza, during which Palestinian prisoners were released from Israeli jails in exchange for Israeli captives held in Gaza. Shown here is a Palestinian prisoner embracing his family in Ramallah after his release on December 1, 2023 [Jaafar Ashtiyeh/AFP]
He eventually also presented new demands: that Israel remain in the Philadelphi Corridor abutting Egypt’s Sinai, checkpoints be set up to “vet” people trying to go back to their homes in north Gaza, and that full lists be provided of all living captives Hamas intends to release.
Senior Israeli officials said Netanyahu’s demands would sabotage the talks, and the mediators refused to pass them on to Hamas.
Egypt has refused Israel’s demand that it be allowed to remain in the Philadelpi Corridor, which would violate the Camp David Accords between the two.
Blinken’s rhetoric
The US proposal followed past drafts, sticking to a three-phase process that would release all captives in Gaza in exchange for prisoners held by Israel, achieving a “sustainable calm” to lead to a full ceasefire, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, the reconstruction of the Strip, and the eventual opening of crossings.
“We had a proposal that [US President Biden] laid out in late May which was fairly detailed and passed at the UN Security Council as a resolution [with] global support,” Matt Duss,