Gaza ceasefire talks stall

AFP | Gaza

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Indirect talks between Hamas and Israel for a ceasefire in Gaza are being held up by Israel’s proposals to keep troops in the territory, two Palestinian sources with knowledge of the discussions said yesterday.

Delegations from both sides began discussions in Qatar last Sunday to try to agree on a temporary halt to the 21-month conflict sparked by Hamas’s deadly October 2023 attack on Israel.

Israel has meanwhile kept up its strikes on Gaza and the territory’s civil defence agency said more than 20 people were killed yesterday, including in an air strike on an area sheltering the displaced.

“We all generally came here because we were told it was a safe area,” Bassam Hamdan told AFP after the overnight attack in an area of Gaza City.

“While we were sleeping, there was an explosion... where two boys, a girl and their mother were staying. We found them torn to pieces, their remains scattered,” he added.

In southern Gaza, bodies covered in white plastic sheets were brought to the Nasser hospital in Khan Yunis while wounded in Rafah were taken for treatment by donkey cart, on stretchers or carried, AFP photographs showed.

If an agreement for a 60-day ceasefire were reached, both Hamas and Israel have said 10 hostages taken in 2023 who remain alive in captivity would be released.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he was prepared then to enter talks for a more permanent end to hostilities.

But one Palestinian source, speaking anonymously due to the sensitivity of the talks, said Israel’s refusal to accept Hamas’s demand to withdraw all of its troops from Gaza was holding back progress.

A second source said mediators had asked both sides to postpone the talks until the arrival of US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in the Qatari capital.

“The negotiations in Doha are facing a setback and complex difficulties due to Israel’s insistence, as of Friday, on presenting a map of withdrawal, which is actually a map of redeployment and repositioning of the Israeli army rather than a genuine withdrawal,” the first source said.

They added that Israel was proposing to maintain military forces in more than 40 percent of the Palestinian territory, forcing hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians into a small area near the city of Rafah, on the border with Egypt.