Israel reported to boycott ceasefire talks in Cairo after Hamas rejects demand for hostage list
- Hamas delegation on Sunday arrived in Cairo for the talks, billed as a possible final hurdle before an agreement that would halt fighting for 6 weeks
- By early evening there was no sign of the Israelis. Israeli media had reported that Israelis would not attend without a list of surviving hostages
A Hamas delegation arrived in the capital Cairo for the talks, billed as a possible final hurdle before an agreement that would halt the fighting for six weeks. But by early evening there was no sign of the Israelis.
“There is no Israeli delegation in Cairo,” Ynet, the online version of Israel’s Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, quoted unidentified Israeli officials as saying. “Hamas refuses to provide clear answers and therefore there is no reason to dispatch the Israeli delegation.”
After the Hamas delegation arrived, a Palestinian official told Reuters the deal was “not yet there”. From the Israeli side, there was no official comment.
One source briefed on the talks had said on Saturday that Israel could stay away from Cairo unless Hamas first presented its full list of hostages who are still alive. A Palestinian source told Reuters Hamas had so far rejected that demand.
In past negotiations Hamas has sought to avoid discussing the well-being of individual hostages until after terms for their release are set.
02:42
Israeli forces open fire on crowd of Palestinians seeking aid,, as Gaza death toll surpasses 30,000
A US official told reporters on Saturday: “The path to a ceasefire right now literally at this hour is straightforward. And there’s a deal on the table. There’s a framework deal.”
Israel had agreed to the framework and it was now up to Hamas to respond, the US official said.
Aid would be ramped up for Gazans pushed to the verge of famine. Fighting would cease in time to head off a massive planned Israeli assault on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are penned in against the enclave’s southern border fence abutting Egypt. Israeli forces would pull back from some areas and let Gazans return to abandoned homes.
But the proposal appears to stop short of fulfilling the main Hamas demand for a permanent end to the war, while also leaving unresolved the fate of more than half of the more than 100 remaining hostages – including Israeli men not covered by terms to free women, children, the elderly and wounded.
Egyptian mediators have suggested those issues could be set aside for now, with assurances to resolve them in later stages. A Hamas source said the militants were still holding out for a “package deal”.
At a morgue outside a Rafah hospital on Sunday morning, women wept and wailed beside rows of bodies of the Abu Anza family, 14 of whom were killed in their home in an overnight air strike. Relatives opened a black plastic body bag to kiss the face of a dead girl in a torn jumper and pink unicorn pyjamas.
Later, the bodies were brought to a graveyard and buried, including two infant twins, a boy and a girl, passed down in white bundles and placed in the ground.
“My heart is gone,” wailed their mother, Rania Abu Anza, who also lost her husband in the attack. “I haven’t had enough time with them.”
Gaza authorities said at least eight people were killed on Sunday when a truck carrying food aid from a Kuwaiti charity was hit by an air strike. There was no immediate Israeli comment.
Residents described heavy bombardment overnight in Khan Younis, the main southern Gaza city, just to the north of Rafah. Further north, where aid no longer reaches, Gaza health authorities said 15 children had now died of malnutrition or dehydration inside the Kamal Adwan hospital where there was no power for the intensive care unit. Staff fear for the lives of six more children there.
The final days leading up to the anticipated truce have been exceptionally bloody, with talks overshadowed last week by the deaths of 118 people and wounding of hundreds more near a food convoy.
Muatasem Salah, a member of the Emergency Committee at the Ministry of Health in Gaza, told Reuters the Israeli account was contradicted by machine gun wounds.
“The wounded and martyrs are the result of being shot with heavy-calibre bullets,” he said. “Any attempt to claim that people were martyred due to overcrowding or being run over is incorrect.”
“There is a serious desire and effort to reach a ceasefire before Ramadan,” said Hakan Fidan, in closing remarks to an annual diplomacy forum in the Mediterranean holiday resort of Antalya.
Fidan confirmed that Abbas would visit the Turkish capital Ankara on Tuesday at the invitation of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a vocal advocate of the Palestinian cause.
Both leaders would discuss “the developments in Palestine, the current course of the war as well as the intra-Palestinian” dialogue, Fidan said.
Additional reporting by Agence France-Presse
