Talks in Cairo resumed on Sunday with the presence of delegations from Qatar, the U.S., Hamas and Israel.
Talks in Cairo this week are reportedly aiming to reach a humanitarian truce by Eid Al-Fitr, high-level Egyptian sources told the pan-Arab Al Araby Al Jadeed newspaper, noting that discussions were getting closer to a deal.
“With the presence of the delegation from [Hamas] and the head of the CIA, William Burns, in Cairo, the agreement is approaching strongly, and it is possible that the announcement will be made from Cairo,” Egyptian sources told the Qatar-based outlet.
The source noted that the United States was showing more flexibility at the latest round of talks and applying more pressure on Israel.
President Joe Biden’s outrage following the April 1 attack on the World Central Kitchen volunteers, which killed seven staff members including Western citizens, has been cited as one of the factors behind the American pressure.
“All parties, as a result of the imposed American pressure, showed flexibility in the possibility of concluding a partial agreement with a temporary humanitarian truce for several days on Eid Al-Fitr, outside the framework of the main agreement negotiations,” the Egyptian source said.
Senior Hamas official Basem Naim separately told the news outlet that the group was “open to all options”.
“We hope that the failure that befell Netanyahu and his government over the course of six months, and the internal and external pressure, will push us to reach a comprehensive ceasefire and the withdrawal of all forces from inside the Gaza Strip,” Naim said.
Regarding the change in Biden’s position, Naim said it was still not enough “to bring about the desired change.”
Talks in Cairo resumed on Sunday with the presence of delegations from Qatar, the U.S., Hamas and Israel.
Reports pointed to the attendance of Qatar’s Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani at the talks. However, Qatar has not officially confirmed this.
CIA director Burns arrived in Cairo late on Saturday to represent the U.S. and met with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi and Egypt’s Director of the General Intelligence Service, Abbas Kamel.
“The meeting focused on the joint Egyptian-Qatari-American efforts to reach a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. It also reviewed the latest developments on the ground, underlining the crucial need for intensified efforts to restore calm and halt the military escalation,” the Egyptian presidency said in a statement.
The delegations at the talks reportedly left Cairo and were expected to return within two days to discuss “the terms of the final agreement,” a high-level Egyptian source told Al Qahera News.
Despite the signs of hope, a Hamas source separately told Al Jazeera that there was still no progress in the talks and Israel did not respond to any of its demands.
The group has been reiterating 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.
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.
Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza entered its seventh month, with more than 33,000 people, including at least 13,800 children, killed.
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.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected all demands to end the war while using the release of the captives from Hamas as a bargaining chip throughout the negotiations.
On Sunday, Netanyahu said he is “determined to achieve total victory,” return all of the captives, and “complete the elimination of Hamas in the entire Gaza Strip including Rafah.”
Israel still has around 130 captives in Gaza, with around 30 presumed dead following the occupation forces’ non-stop attacks and the obstacles Israel placed to ensure they received food and medicine.
Meanwhile, Israeli occupation forces withdrew from Khan Younis on Sunday after four months, reducing the entire area to rubble. Israel decided to leave the Nahal Brigade instead, which oversees the so-called Netzarim Corridor.
The corridor enables the occupation forces to carry out deadly raids in northern and central Gaza while preventing Palestinians’ return to the north.
Israel persisted in its air strikes on Khan Younis following its withdrawal, killing dozens of civilians, according to Palestine’s news agency.
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.
