Multi-party negotiations on hammering out a truce agreement between the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas and the Israeli regime has reportedly failed to yield any results as the occupying entity’s genocide in the besieged Gaza Strip enters its fifth month.
The American news website Axios cited an unnamed Israeli official as saying that the talks involving the United States, Egypt, Israel and Qatar on a ceasefire deal, which also included an agreement on the release of captives, ended “without a breakthrough” on Tuesday.
The Israeli delegation was on its way back from Cairo, the official said, adding that CIA Director William Burns, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahma Al Thani, and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi as well as other Egyptian officials had participated in the Cairo-based negotiations aimed at “protecting Palestinian civilians and delivering more aid into Gaza.”
Citing Egyptian officials, the Wall Street Journal also said the Israeli delegation had departed the Egyptian capital “without closing any of the major gaps in the negotiations.”
A senior Egyptian official said that despite the Israeli delegation’s departure, the negotiations were “positive” and would continue for three more days.
A Hamas official was reported as saying that the resistance movement was waiting for the outcome of the Cairo meeting, but was “open to discussing any initiative that achieves an end to aggression and war.”
The parties in the talks were seeking a formula acceptable to Hamas, which “says it is only possible to sign a deal once it is based on an Israeli commitment to ending its war and pulling out its forces from Gaza.”
‘No trust in Israel’
Hamas told the participants at the Cairo talks that the resistance movement “had no trust in Israel” as the regime would renew the aggression on the besieged territory if the Israeli captives were released.
About 130 of the 250 Israeli captives taken by Hamas during the October 7 attack are still in Gaza after a provisional truce deal in December saw the exchange of prisoners between the two sides.
The Cairo-based negotiations came as international calls grow for Israel to hold back on a planned assault on the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah at a time that about half of Gaza’s 2.3 million people who have been displaced due to Israel’s genocidal war on the besieged territory are currently squeezed there.
Israel had designated Rafah a “safe zone,” but it is now threatening an all-out military offensive, leaving the people sheltering there terrified with nowhere left to go.
Martin Griffiths, the United Nations humanitarian chief, has raised the alarm about Israel’s ground invasion of Rafah, saying the raid could lead to a “slaughter” in the densely populated area and put aid operation at “death’s door.”
The city has recently come under heavy Israeli airstrikes, with over 100 people killed there on Monday.
Israel waged the brutal war on Gaza on October 7 after Hamas-led Palestinian resistance groups carried out a historic operation against the occupying entity in retaliation for its intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the usurping regime has killed at least 28,473 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 68,146 others.
