Israeli delegation arrives in Cairo for Gaza ceasefire talks
World
International mediators are pushing Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt fighting
CAIRO (AP) – An Israeli delegation has arrived in Egypt to press ahead with cease-fire talks, as Israel and Hamas consider the latest proposal.
According to three Egyptian airport officials told AP but did not provide further details.
International mediators are pushing Israel and Hamas toward a phased deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages held by the militant group in Gaza.
Talks between the sides were rattled over the weekend when Israel said it targeted Hamas’ military commander in a massive strike. His status remains unclear.
Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack sparked the war when the group stormed into southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people — mostly civilians — and abducting about 250. Since then, Israeli ground offensives and bombardments have killed more than 38,600 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. It does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Two international courts have accused Israel of war crimes and genocide – charges Israel denies. Most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people are crammed into squalid tent camps in central and southern Gaza. Israeli restrictions, fighting and the breakdown of law and order have limited humanitarian aid efforts, causing widespread hunger and sparking fears of famine.
UN calls Netanyahu’s office comments ‘reprehensible’
Meanwhile, the United Nations says comments by a spokesman in Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office about the head of the UN agency helping Palestinian refugees are “reprehensible” and threatening.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric was responding on Wednesday to comments made by spokesman David Mencer who called Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the a gency known as UNRWA, “one of the bad guys, a terrorist sympathizer, a Jew-killing enabler, a liar.”
Mencer issued the denunciations of Lazzarini on Tuesday after saying that Israeli forces have retrieved “millions of documents and captured enemy material” exposing the involvement of UNRWA employees in Hamas’ attacks on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.
He said the documents also showed “the deep and systemic infiltration by those terror organizations, Hamas, but also Palestinian Islamic Jihad into the ranks of UNRWA.”
The UN’s internal watchdog is currently investigating allegations against 14 of the 19 UNRWA staffers who Israel claims were involved in the Oct. 7 attacks. It closed one case because Israel provided no evidence and suspended four others because of a lack of sufficient evidence.
The UN’s Dujarric said “there have not been a million documents handed over to the secretary-general,” Antonio Guterres, and a letter sent to him with about a hundred names was immediately sent to the Office of Internal Oversight Services, the watchdog known as OIOS.
UNRWA has 32,000 staff in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and the Palestinian territories, including 13,000 in Gaza who provide education, health care, food and other services to several million Palestinians and their families. UNRWA facilities in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinians have sought shelter, have been repeatedly attacked.
Mencer’s “inflammatory language” to describe Lazzarini “in an environment that’s already extremely volatile is reprehensible and downright dangerous because it puts at risk senior UN officials whose only focus is on helping civilians in Gaza and to alleviate their suffering,” Dujarric said.
The UN spokesman stressed that it was UNRWA that first announced the list of staff potentially involved in the Oct. 7 attacks, which Lazzarini has repeatedly denounced.
‘Hezbollah, Iran and Lebanon don’t want war’
Russia’s top diplomat, in the meantime, said the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, its main backer Iran, and Lebanon’s government do not want “a full-blown war – and there’s a suspicion that some circles in Israel are trying to achieve just that.”
Sergey Lavrov told a UN news conference on Wednesday that Russia is doing “everything possible to calm tensions.” He expressed hope that Western nations make every effort to ensure Israel won’t act on what he says US and European analysts are calling Israel’s “provocative mindsets.”
Hezbollah and Israel have been trading fire almost every day since the Israel-Hamas war began in Gaza last October. The US and the international community have been lobbying for calm, and are hopeful a diplomatic solution will prevent the fighting from spiraling into a wider Middle East war.
Should war break out, Israel would face a much more formidable foe in Lebanon than in Gaza. Hezbollah is the Arab world’s most significant paramilitary force with a robust internal structure as well as a sizeable arsenal. Israel sees the group as its most direct threat.
Lavrov said Iran’s previous government and new president “reflect a very responsible position that Iran is not interested in escalation.”
Without offering names, Lavrov said US and European analysts say “escalation, as the practical developments show, is something which Israel is interested in.”
