Hamas officials are in Cairo to negotiate a potential deal that would see the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, according to Egyptian officials, in an attempt to stop the fighting before the holy month of Ramadan.
Egyptian officials told the newspaper:Wall Street Journal“Negotiators believe that Hamas and Israel are making slow progress and could reach an agreement before Ramadan. A senior Hamas official said that the first week of Ramadan is a more realistic goal for reaching an agreement.
Israel has agreed to the broad outlines of the agreement, according to an Israeli official and an American official.
But the Israeli official expressed concern about whether Hamas was sincere in reaching an agreement after the delegation in Cairo failed to provide a list of the names of living hostages and their conditions, a request that mediators say Israel made last week.
The official said that Israel believes it is negotiating the fate of about 40 sick, elderly and female hostages, but it does not know who among them is still alive.
On Sunday, Hamas did not provide answers to two major sticking points, according to Egyptian and Israeli officials: Who are the Palestinian prisoners it wants to release? How many hostages will be released?
On Sunday, Israel decided not to send a high-level delegation to Cairo to participate in the negotiations after mediators informed it that Hamas officials arrived in the Egyptian capital without answers to many of the main Israeli demands, according to the Israeli official.
Even if the two negotiating teams are able to reach an agreement, another major challenge remains, which is that the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, has not been in contact for at least a week, raising fears that the man who can implement the deal will not be reached. According to Egyptian and Qatari officials.
According to a recent letter sent to Hamas’ political leadership in Qatar, Sinwar said there should be no rush to secure the hostage deal, people familiar with the discussions said. They said Sinwar hoped that the Israeli incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah during Ramadan would prompt Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank to rise up against Israel.
Israel now also believes that Sinwar may prefer to increase tensions during Ramadan rather than reach a cessation of fighting, according to the Israeli official.
Israeli and American officials said that Israel agreed to the framework of an agreement reached late last month in Paris between American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators. This framework includes a six-week cessation of fighting and a large influx of aid into Gaza, but Hamas has not yet provided a detailed response.
The war broke out on October 7, following an unprecedented attack launched by the movement on areas and sites adjacent to the Gaza Strip, which resulted in the killing of more than 1,160 people, most of them civilians, according to an Agence France-Presse count based on Israeli data.
About 250 hostages were also taken, and Israel says that 130 of them are still in Gaza, after an exchange deal that took place during a temporary truce for a week that began last November, and it is believed that 31 of them were killed.
Israel responded by bombing the Gaza Strip and a ground invasion, which led to the killing of 30,035 people, most of them civilians, and the injury of another 70,457 people, according to the latest figures issued by the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip.
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2024-03-04 04:40:53
