On Sunday, August 25, in Cairo, Israeli and Hamas teams attempted to negotiate a Gaza ceasefire but were unable to come to a consensus. Multiple proposals put up by mediators were met with resistance from both parties.
A senior US source, however, characterized the discussions as “constructive” and stated that all parties were working toward “a final and implementable agreement.”
The unnamed official told Reuters, “The process will continue over the coming days through working groups to further address remaining issues and details.”
Following the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, months of negotiations culminated in the meeting in Cairo, which marked the start of Israel’s military operation.
One of the main issues in the current negotiations, which are being mediated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar, is Israel’s presence in the Philadelphi Corridor, a slender 14.5-kilometer area of land that runs along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt.
The Israeli military’s presence on the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors, which pass through the center of the Gaza Strip, is opposed by a number of mediators. Nevertheless, the parties rejected all of them.
The sources further stated that Israel objected to the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners and insisted that they leave Gaza if they were freed. Teams from Israel, the US, and Egypt have been working together to close gaps; on Saturday, Qatar and Egypt guided Hamas through the proposal. On Sunday, Israel entered the negotiations and raised concerns about the current one. According to Hamas, Israel had reneged on its promise to remove troops from the Philadelphi corridor and had added new requirements, such as evaluating displaced Palestinians as they return to the more densely populated north when the ceasefire starts. “We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions,” Hamas official Osama Hamdan stated to Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.