Israeli Team Heads to Cairo For New Round of Gaza Truce Talks
(Bloomberg) -- Israeli negotiators arrived in Cairo for another round of talks aimed at achieving a cease-fire in the war against Hamas in Gaza.
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The head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, David Barnea, is now in the Egyptian capital with his team, Israeli officials said. US President Joe Biden’s main envoy for Middle East, Brett McGurk, is also there, according to the American government.
The talks are set to begin on Sunday, though that could change, an Israeli official said. Before then, Barnea will hold discussions with Egyptian authorities about the war and Israeli forces’ control of Gaza’s border with Egypt, the official said.
It’s unclear if Iran-backed Hamas will send representatives. It didn’t for negotiations in Qatar last week and was instead briefed by mediators.
The Cairo round will be the latest in a months-long effort to pause or end the war that followed Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, during which the group killed 1,200 people and took around 240 hostage. Israel’s subsequent air and ground offensive on Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Biden is using his last months in office to try to end the conflict, which has caused huge political divisions globally, including in the US.
“With respect to the war in Gaza, President Biden and I are working around the clock,” Vice President Kamala Harris said in a speech on Thursday, when she formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination for November’s US election. “Now is the time get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done.”
While backing Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas — designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union — she said of Gaza that the “scale of suffering is heartbreaking.”
“President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination,” she said.
In July, Israel’s parliament passed a resolution expressing formal opposition to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, warning that it could serve as a base for terrorist groups.
On the table in Cairo is a proposal backed by the US, Egypt and Qatar — the main mediators — that provides for a phased cessation of hostilities, the release of hostages held by Hamas, the freeing of many Palestinians in Israeli jails and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from areas of Gaza.
One key point of tension is over Israel wanting to keep troops stationed along the strategic Philadelphi corridor, the southern portion of Gaza that runs along the border with Egypt, to prevent arms smuggling from the Arab nation. Hamas opposes that, while Egypt is also wary of Israeli troops remaining there.
Another sticking point is that Hamas wants a truce to amount to a permanent end to the war, while Israel says it needs to retain the right to restart fighting to achieve its aim of destroying the group.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken returned to Washington this week from a whirlwind trip to Israel, Egypt and Qatar. That was intended to bring the parties closer to agreement. In Jerusalem, Blinken and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had backed the “bridging” proposal, leaving the onus on Hamas to accept.
“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said.
Hamas has blamed Israel for stalling the talks, saying Netanyahu keeps adding demands.
Israel is still on high-alert for the possibility of an attack by Iran. The Islamic Republic vowed to retaliate for the assassination of a leading Hamas figure, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran in late July. Iran and Hamas blamed Israel, which has neither confirmed nor denied being responsible.
Iran says it will bide its time and does not want to scupper the Gaza cease-fire talks.
(Updates with comments from Kamala Harris, context on negotiations.)
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