Hamas sends delegation to Cairo peace talks but rules out direct participation | Hamas

Hamas has sent a delegation to Cairo to review progress in peace talks, but a Hamas official said the group would not participate directly in the negotiations, which it has boycotted for the past 10 days.

Hamas representatives are expected to arrive in the Egyptian capital on Saturday, where negotiators from Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar are holding talks on an elusive deal that would include the release of Israeli hostages, the release of Palestinian prisoners and a ceasefire.

Senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq confirmed the delegation’s presence in a statement, but another Hamas official, who did not give his name, told AFP that Hamas representatives would not participate in the talks.

The current sticking point in the negotiations is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s insistence that any peace agreement must allow an Israeli presence along the Egypt-Gaza border, a strip of land known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and on a road that bisects the Gaza Strip, the Netzarim Corridor.

Hamas has rejected any such presence, saying it contradicts the three-stage peace plan announced by Joe Biden in late May, later endorsed by the UN Security Council, which ultimately calls for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas said it accepted the agreement, but boycotted the current round of talks on the grounds that the proposal had been radically changed, and rejected US claims that it had backed away from the agreement.

The White House insists that Biden’s peace plan has been accepted by Israel, but Netanyahu has repeatedly questioned its terms and vowed that his government will continue the war until Hamas is completely eliminated.

The prime minister insists that the Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor is necessary to prevent weapons smuggling to Hamas from Egypt. But the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo claims it has cracked down on smuggling and cross-border smuggling tunnels and that an Israeli presence would raise questions about Egyptian sovereignty and territorial integrity.

After US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region, the United States claimed to have secured Israel’s agreement to a compromise and urged Hamas to accept it, but has yet to reveal details of what it claims is a “bridge proposal.”

The United States is represented in the Cairo talks by CIA Director William Burns and US Special Envoy to the region Brett McGurk.

As the talks in Cairo continued, Israel pressed on with its military campaign, now in its 11th month, which began after a surprise Hamas attack on southern Israel on October 7 that killed nearly 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, but many are feared dead.

According to Gaza health authorities, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s retaliatory military campaign. In recent weeks, Israel has issued an increasing number of evacuation orders to Palestinians in Gaza, almost all of whom have been displaced multiple times by the offensive and are now living in makeshift camps.

Many Palestinians living in areas previously designated by Israel as “humanitarian zones” have been ordered to leave these areas this month, and as a result, displaced residents are crowded into an ever-shrinking area with minimal food and water.

Health conditions have been steadily deteriorating, and the World Health Organization has confirmed the first case of polio in Gaza in more than a quarter of a century, an infant with partial paralysis due to the virus, but reports indicate that his condition is stable.