Egypt hosts Hamas in new Gaza ceasefire push, looting halts aid

CAIRO: Hamas leaders held talks with Egyptian security officials on Sunday in a fresh push for a ceasefire in the Gaza war, two Hamas sources said, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was set to hold security talks on the matter, two Israeli officials said.

The Hamas visit to Cairo was the first since the United States announced on Wednesday it would revive efforts in collaboration with Qatar, Egypt and Turkey to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza, that would include a hostage deal.

White House national security advisor Jake Sullivan said he thought the chances of a ceasefire and hostage deal in the Palestinian territory were now more likely.

"(Hamas) are isolated. Hezbollah is no longer fighting with them, and their backers in Iran and elsewhere are preoccupied with other conflicts," he told CNN on Sunday.

"So I think we may have a chance to make progress, but I'm not going to predict exactly when it will happen ... we've come so close so many times and not gotten across the finish line."

Through several rounds of negotiations over the past year, Hamas has insisted that any deal should conclude with Israel ending the war, while Israel says the war will end when Hamas no longer rules Gaza or poses a threat to Israelis.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Sunday that there was some indication of progress toward a hostage deal but that Israel's conditions for ending the war have not changed.

"We will know in the coming days. From our perspective, the government of Israel, there is a desire to advance in this direction," he said at a Israel Hayom newspaper conference.

Fighting raged on meanwhile in the enclave and the head of the United Nations Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) said it had to halt aid deliveries through one crossing a day after armed gangs inside Gaza seized food from a truck convoy.

"This difficult decision comes at a time hunger is rapidly deepening," UNRWA's Philippe Lazzarini said in a post on X.

The halting of aid deliveries through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing came almost two weeks after a large shipment was hijacked on the same route.

UNRWA's Lazzarini said it was Israel's responsibility "as occupying power" to protect aid workers and supplies, and that the humanitarian operation had become "unnecessarily impossible" due to what he said were Israeli restrictions.

COGAT, the Israeli military department responsible for aid transfers, denies it is hindering humanitarian relief into Gaza, saying there is no limit on supplies for civilians and blaming delays on the United Nations, which it says is inefficient.

FIGHTING

The conflict started when Hamas-led forces attacked southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and abducting more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli officials.

Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 44,400 people and displaced nearly all of the enclave's population, Gaza officials say. Vast swathes of the enclave lie in ruins.

On Sunday, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 20 people, medics said, as Israeli forces kept up bombardments across the enclave and blew up houses on its northern edge.

In the central Gaza camp of Nuseirat, an Israeli airstrike killed six people in a house, and another attack killed three in a home in Gaza City, medics said.

Two children were killed when a missile hit a tent encampment in Khan Younis in the south, while four other people were killed in an airstrike in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, medics told Reuters.

Residents said the military blew up clusters of houses in the northern Gaza areas of Jabalia, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun, where Israeli forces have operated since October.

Palestinians say Israel's operations on the northern edge of the enclave are part of a plan to clear people out through forced evacuations and bombardments to create a buffer zone. The Israeli military denies this and says it is fighting Hamas.

The military says it has killed hundreds of Hamas forces in that part of Gaza as it fights to stop the faction regrouping. It has also lost around 30 soldiers there in combat over the past two months, a relatively high death toll.

Hamas does not provide details on its own fatalities.

Two Palestinian detainees from Gaza have died in Israeli custody, prisoner advocacy groups said on Sunday.

There was no immediate comment by Israeli authorities.