Washington reported “progress” on Friday in ongoing talks in Cairo toward a truce in the Gaza Strip and the release of hostages, at a time when the war between Israel and Hamas is continuing.
The heads of Mossad (Israeli foreign intelligence), David Barnea, and Shin Bet (internal security), Ronen Bar, are taking part in the Cairo negotiations, a week after talks in Doha with American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
According to the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are in Cairo “to advance an agreement to (release) the hostages” kidnapped and taken to Gaza during an unprecedented attack by the Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 on Israeli soil, which triggered war in the devastated and besieged Palestinian territory.
CIA Director William Burns and White House Middle East Coordinator Brett McGurk are also present, while Hamas, which did not take part in the previous round of talks in Doha, is not participating.
The White House denied Friday that the talks in Cairo were close to failure, while Israel and the Palestinian Islamist movement accused each other of blocking an agreement, saying instead that “progress (had) been made.”
“We now need both sides to come together and work toward an agreement,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said, adding that last night’s discussions “were constructive in nature” and hoping to see that momentum “continue” over the “next two days.”
“Heavy and difficult feeling”
In Doha, Washington submitted a new proposal for a truce agreement, the content of which has not been made public.
Israel has not yet announced its approval and Hamas has rejected it, accusing the United States of including “Israeli conditions” in it, particularly on the “Philadelphia corridor.”
Mr Netanyahu says he is determined to keep Israeli troops in the strip of land along the Gaza-Egypt border, which they took control of in May, “in order to prevent Hamas from rearming”, according to his office.
Hamas will not accept “anything less than the withdrawal of the occupation forces (from Gaza), including Philadelphia,” Hossam Badran, a Hamas official, told AFP on Friday, seeing in Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on wanting to control this sector Israel’s desire “to continue its war” and “its refusal to reach a final agreement.”
The Islamist movement insists on the implementation, as is, of a plan announced on May 31 by Joe Biden, which it had accepted. This provided for a six-week truce accompanied by an Israeli withdrawal from densely populated areas of Gaza and the release of hostages, then, in a second phase, a total Israeli withdrawal from the territory.
Ella Ben Ami, the daughter of an Israeli hostage, said after a meeting with Mr. Netanyahu on Friday that an agreement “will not happen soon,” saying she “left (this meeting) with a heavy and difficult feeling,” according to a statement from the Hostages Forum, which represents some of the hostages’ relatives.
For the United States, a ceasefire in Gaza would also help avoid a military escalation in the Middle East, where Iran and its allies – Hamas and Lebanese Hezbollah – accuse Israel of having assassinated the former leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran at the end of July, and threaten to retaliate.
Israel is also under pressure on its northern border, where it has been exchanging fire daily for more than ten months with Hezbollah, which has opened a front against it in support of Hamas.
On Friday, eight people, including a child and five Hezbollah fighters, were killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry and the Islamist movement.
Bombings and fighting
On October 7, Hamas commandos infiltrated from Gaza into southern Israel carried out an attack of unprecedented scale that resulted in the deaths of 1,199 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted that day, 105 are still being held in Gaza, including 34 declared dead by the army.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas, which seized power in Gaza in 2007 and which it considers terrorist, along with the United States and the European Union.
His army launched a major offensive in response to the attack in the Palestinian territory that has left at least 40,265 dead, according to the Hamas government’s health ministry, which did not provide details on the number of civilians and fighters killed. According to the UN, most of the dead were women and minors.
In the Gaza Strip, where some 2.4 million people are facing a humanitarian disaster, witnesses reported Israeli artillery fire in Khan Younis and Deir el-Balah on Friday.
The Israeli military said that over the past day, Israeli troops had “eliminated dozens of terrorists and dismantled dozens of terrorist infrastructure sites” in these areas.
According to an AFP journalist, clashes took place in the morning between Palestinian fighters and the Israeli army in the south of Gaza City.
Witnesses also heard heavy Israeli tank fire in the western neighborhoods of the city of Rafah.