Conference in Cairo calls for immediate end to Sudan war

CAIRO: Sixteen days after the first phase of an agreement to end the Gaza war, Hamas has accepted a US proposal to start talks on the release of Israeli hostages, including soldiers and men, a senior Hamas source told Reuters on Saturday.
The militant Islamist group has dropped its demand that Israel first commit to a permanent ceasefire before signing the deal and will allow negotiations to achieve that goal during the first six-week phase, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential.
A Palestinian official close to the internationally mediated peace efforts said the proposal, if accepted by Israel, could lead to a framework agreement and end the nine-month war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
A source in Israel’s negotiating team, who asked not to be identified, said on Friday that there was now a real chance of an agreement, in sharp contrast to previous instances in the nine-month Gaza war, when Israel declared the conditions imposed by Hamas unacceptable.
A spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath. On Friday, his office said talks would continue next week and stressed that there were still differences of opinion between the sides.
According to health authorities in the Gaza Strip, more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict since Hamas attacked southern Israeli cities on October 7. According to official Israeli figures, Hamas killed 1,200 people and took around 250 hostages.
The new proposal ensures that mediators will guarantee a temporary ceasefire, the delivery of humanitarian aid and the withdrawal of Israeli troops while indirect talks continue to implement the second phase of the agreement, the Hamas source said.
Efforts to reach a ceasefire and release hostages in the Gaza Strip have intensified in recent days, thanks to active shuttle diplomacy between Washington, Israel and Qatar. Qatar is leading the mediation efforts from Doha, where the exiled Hamas leadership is based.
According to a regional source, the US government is trying hard to reach an agreement before the presidential elections in November.
Netanyahu said on Friday that the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency had returned from an initial meeting with mediators in Qatar and that negotiations would continue next week.

Battle rages
Meanwhile, Israeli forces have stepped up military strikes across the enclave, killing at least 29 Palestinians and wounding 100 others in the past 24 hours, health officials in the area said.
Among those killed in the airstrikes were five local journalists, bringing the number of journalists killed since October 7 to 158, according to the Hamas-run government media office in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces have expanded their incursions in Rafah, near the border with Egypt, killing four Palestinian police officers and wounding eight others in an airstrike on a police vehicle on Saturday, health officials said.
A statement from the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry said the four included Fares Abdel-Al, police chief of the western Rafah district of Tel Al-Sultan.
The Israeli military said its forces continued their “intelligence operations” in Rafah, destroying several underground buildings, confiscating weapons and equipment, and killing several Palestinian gunmen.
Israel stated that the aim of its operations in Rafah was to destroy the last battalions of Hamas’s armed wing.
In the central Al-Nuseirat camp, one of the enclave’s eight historic refugee camps, ten Palestinians were killed in an Israeli air strike on a house, medics said.
The Israeli military said it had taken out a Hamas rocket cell operating from a humanitarian area. It said it had carried out a targeted attack after taking measures to ensure that civilians were unharmed. Hamas denies Israeli accusations that it is using civilian property for military purposes.
The armed wings of Hamas and Islamic Jihad said fighters had attacked Israeli forces in several areas of the enclave with anti-tank missiles and mortar shells.