No breakthrough in Gaza talks, say Egyptian and Palestinian sources

The latest round of talks in Cairo to restore the defunct Gaza ceasefire and free Israeli hostages ended with no apparent breakthrough, said Palestinian and Egyptian sources on Monday. Reuters has reported that the sources said that Hamas had stuck to its position that any agreement must lead to an end to the war in Gaza. This was the intention of the second phase of the ceasefire agreement which Israel refused to implement.

The occupation state resumed its military offensive against the Palestinians in Gaza last month after the ceasefire agreed in January unravelled. It insists that it will not end the war until Hamas is eradicated, despite agreeing that the ceasefire would have three phases, including the second phase in which Israeli troops would withdraw from Gaza and the fighting would end. Hamas insists that the second phase of the ceasefire should have been adhered to by the occupation state.

Nevertheless, despite that disagreement, the sources said that a Hamas delegation led by the group’s Gaza head Khalil Al-Hayya had shown some flexibility over how many hostages it could free in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel should a ceasefire be extended.

An Egyptian source told Reuters that the latest proposal to extend the truce would see Hamas free an increased number of hostages. Israeli minister Zeev Elkin, a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet, told Army Radio on Monday that Israel was seeking the release of around 10 hostages, raised from previous Hamas consent to free five.

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Hamas has asked for more time to respond to the latest proposal, said the Egyptian source. “Hamas has no problem, but it wants guarantees that Israel agrees to begin the talks on the second phase of the ceasefire agreement” leading to an end to the war, the source added.

The Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement freed 33 Israeli hostages in return for hundreds of Palestinian detainees during the six-week first phase of the ceasefire which began in January. But the second phase, which was meant to begin at the start of March and lead to the end of the war, was never launched because Israel wanted an extension of the first phase instead, meaning that it would have no obligation to withdraw its troops from Gaza and stop its offensive.

Since restarting their attacks last month, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,500 Palestinians, many of them civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands, seizing swathes of territory and imposing a total blockade on all supplies to the entire enclave. Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the Gaza Strip. Israel believes that up to 24 of them are still alive.

Palestinians point out that the wave of Israeli attacks since the collapse of the ceasefire has been among the deadliest and most intense of the war, hitting an exhausted population surviving in the enclave’s ruins. In Jabalia, a community on Gaza’s northern edge, rescue workers in orange vests have been trying to smash through concrete with a sledgehammer to recover bodies buried underneath a building destroyed by an Israeli air strike.

The feet and a hand of one person could be seen under a concrete slab. Men carried a body away wrapped in a blanket. Workers at the scene said as many as 25 people had been killed. The Israelis claimed to have targeted “militants” planning an ambush.

In Khan Younis in the south, a camp of makeshift tents had been shredded into piles of debris by an air strike. Families had returned to poke through the rubbish in search of belongings.

“We used to live in houses. They were destroyed. Now, our tents have been destroyed too. We don’t know where to stay,” said Ismail Al-Raqab, who returned to the area after his family fled the raid before dawn.

The leaders of the two Arab countries that have led the ceasefire mediation efforts, Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, met in Doha on Sunday. The Egyptian source said that Sisi had called for additional international guarantees for a truce agreement, beyond those provided by Egypt and Qatar themselves.

US President Donald Trump, who has backed Israel’s decision to resume its campaign and called for the Palestinian population of Gaza to be, in effect, ethnically cleansed from the territory, said last week that progress was being made in returning the hostages.

The war was triggered by the Hamas-led 7 October, 2023, cross-border incursion during which 1,200 people were killed — many of them by the Israel Defence Forces carrying out the controversial Hannibal Directive —and 251 were taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Since then, more than 50,900 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, which has been described as “plausible genocide” by the International Court of Justice.

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