The Biden administration is also pressing Israel to allow limited numbers of civilians to return to northern Gaza, U.S., Israeli and Egyptian officials told WSJ.
Negotiators from Qatar, the United States, Hamas and Israel are reportedly returning to Cairo on Sunday for another round of talks, as Israel’s war on Gaza enters its seventh month, high-ranking Egyptian sources told Al Qahera news.
The sources told the Egyptian news outlet on Saturday that “the last hours witnessed intense Egyptian contacts to resume truce negotiations.”
The sources said that Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani will be in attendance. However, Qatar has not officially confirmed this.
CIA Director Bill Burns arrived in Cairo late on Saturday to represent the U.S., sources at Cairo airport separately told Reuters.
Hamas also confirmed in a statement that it was sending a delegation led by its deputy chief in Gaza, Khalil Al-Hayya, on Sunday for the talks.
The group reiterated its demands from the proposal it submitted on March 14 for a complete ceasefire and the unconditional return of internally displaced people in Gaza – a point of contention in the talks.
On October 12, Israel ordered the evacuation of 1.1 million people from the north to the south, which it said was a safer zone. Six months on, Israel has advanced deeper into the south with a planned invasion of Rafah, where more than one million displaced people have been sheltering.
Those attempting to return are either shot at or arrested by occupation forces.
Israel is only open to allowing 2,000 displaced people to return per day, mainly women and children, within the six-week truce, Arab mediators involved in the talks told The Wall Street Journal on Saturday.
A maximum of 60,000 would return, passing solely through Israeli military checkpoints, thereby denying them the right to unrestricted passage. The return would mostly exclude men aged between 18 and 50, the sources said.
The return of the internally displaced people in Gaza is the main dispute in the ongoing ceasefire talks, Qatar confirmed last week.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration is also pressing Israel to allow limited numbers of civilians to return to northern Gaza, U.S., Israeli and Egyptian officials told WSJ.
The resumption of the talks comes under increased pressure on Israel after it killed seven aid workers from the U.S-based World Central Kitchen (WCK) on April 1. The workers included nationals from Australia, Poland, the United Kingdom, a dual U.S. and Canadian citizen, and Palestine.
An investigation by Al Jazeera’s Sanad Verification Agency last week also found that the Israeli attacks were intentional, dismissing Israel’s claims that it was accidental.
The incident sparked outrage particularly among the West, despite Israel repeatedly brushing off the killing of more than 33,000 people in Gaza, including more than 13,800 children.
A tense phone call reportedly took place between Joe Biden and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, during which the US president pressed for “an immediate ceasefire”.
Biden also urged Netanyahu “to empower his negotiators to conclude a deal without delay to bring the hostages home,” according to a White House readout of the call.
Hours after the call, Israel announced the entry of “temporary aid” through the Beit Hanoon (Erez) crossing for the first time since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.
Israel has also been using the release of the remaining 130 captives, including the bodies of 30 presumed dead, as a bargaining chip throughout the negotiations.
This is despite its complicity in killing the captives through its attacks on Gaza and the obstacles it placed to ensure they received food and medicine.
Six months of war
Israel’s genocidal war entered its seventh month on Sunday without a ceasefire in sight, as horrific scenes of corpses and destruction became a daily scene for the 2.2 million population.
Despite the United Nations Security Council resolution on March 25, Israel has continued to commit massacres on the ground, including the latest two-week raid of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex.
Israel also ignored the International Court of Justice’s provisional measures of January 26 in response to South Africa’s case accusing Israel of committing genocide in Gaza.
Commenting on the six-month mark of the war, Martin Griffiths, UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, said it “is a betrayal of humanity.”
“We face the unconscionable prospect of further escalation in Gaza, where no one is safe and there is nowhere safe to go. An already fragile aid operation continues to be undermined by bombardments, insecurity and denials of access,” Griffiths said on Saturday.
“It must also spur a collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity,” he added.
On Saturday evening, Israel launched deadly airstrikes on the cities of Khan Younis and Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, according to Palestine’s news agency (Wafa).
WAFA correspondents reported that the Israeli troops also opened intensive gunfire towards the village of Al-Zanna, east of Khan Younis.
The war has displaced at least 1.7 million people, more than 80 percent of the population, while destroying 60 percent of Gaza’s once vibrant residential buildings.
The cost of damage to Gaza’s infrastructure during the first four months of the war is estimated at $18.5 billion, according to a recent report by the World Bank and the UN.
“As of the end of January 2024, direct damage of around $18.5 billion has been inflicted on the built infrastructure of Gaza, equivalent to 97 percent of the total Gross Domestic Product of the West Bank and Gaza in 2022,” the report said.
Housing units account for 72 percent of the damage costs, or $13.3 billion, whereas public service, energy, and water facilities have suffered nearly $800 million in damages.
There are only 10 partially functioning hospitals in Gaza out of an initial 36, with most facilities either destroyed or forced to shut down due to a lack of basic resources.
A total of 1.1 million people in Gaza are facing catastrophic levels of food insecurity, the UN said on Friday. At least 28 children also died as a result of dehydration and malnutrition.
Less than 200 aid trucks have been entering Gaza daily, significantly lower than the pre-war daily average of 500.