Israel and the Palestinians yesterday agreed to resume talks late next month on cementing a Gaza ceasefire, allowing time for Palestinian factions to resolve internal differences that could threaten the Egyptian-mediated negotiations.
Yesterday’s meetings began in Cairo around noon under the leadership of Egyptian intelligence, having been delayed for almost three hours while Palestinian factions discussed whether to withdraw in protest over Israel’s killing of two Hamas members in Hebron hours before the talks were set to begin.
Israel said Marwan Kawasme and Amar Abu Aysha abducted and killed three Israeli youths in the occupied West Bank in June, touching off a chain of events that led to the July-August war in Gaza.
The Palestinian delegation condemned the killings but said it would not give Israel a pretext “to escape” commitments made in an August 26 truce that called for talks within a month to agree long-term border arrangements for the blockaded Gaza Strip.
Fifty days of conflict between Hamas and Israel left devastation in some Gaza districts.
More than 2,100 Palestinians, most of them civilians, were killed in the fighting, according to the Gaza health ministry.
Sixty-seven Israeli soldiers and six civilians in Israel were also killed. Israel launched the offensive on July 8 with the declared aim of halting cross-border rocket salvoes by Hamas and other militant groups.
Egyptian-mediated talks in July and August succeeded in securing a series of ceasefires aimed at laying the groundwork for talks on a broader deal.
Palestinian delegates said yesterday’s meetings were intended to set the tone for wider negotiations that will take place in late October, after the end of Jewish and Muslim religious holidays.
“Each side proposed the headline files that it wants to include on the timetable of future negotiations,” Hamas official Izzat Risheq said in a statement on his Facebook page shortly after the meetings ended. “It was agreed [the talks] would be resumed in the last week of October.”
Risheq said Palestinian negotiators had pressed for the construction of air and sea ports in Gaza and for an end to punitive measures imposed on the West Bank since June, including the release of Hamas prisoners.
The Palestinians want an end to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. But the Jewish state considers Hamas a security threat and wants guarantees weapons will not enter the densely populated area of 1.8 million people if restrictions are eased.
The Israeli delegation left Cairo early yesterday evening without making any comments.
Efforts to turn the ceasefire into a lasting truce could prove difficult, however, with the sides far apart on their central demands. At the same time, divisions among the Palestinians themselves could make it harder to secure a deal.
A Fatah delegation arrived in Cairo last night ahead of separate two-day talks beginning today aimed at mending a rift between Hamas and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction over a range of key issues including control of Gaza.
The ceasefire struck last month to end the Gaza war included stipulations that the Palestinian Authority, led by Abbas, should take over civil administration in Gaza from Hamas.
But a dispute over the Palestinian Authority’s non-payment of salaries to Gaza’s public sector workers has brought tensions between the two main Palestinian factions to near-breaking point, raising the risk of a return to conflict.
Azzam al-Ahmed, a Fatah official who is leading the joint delegation in Cairo, said in a statement that as well as control of Gaza, Fatah wants decisions related to war and peace to be taken at the national level rather than by individual factions.
This thorny issue will not be easy to resolve and could undermine any broader deal with Israel.
“We cannot take one step forward because all the issues related to Gaza, especially after the war, cannot be resolved except with national unity... and the presence of a government that represents the recognised national authority, and this includes the ending of the blockade,” Ahmed said.
Syrian warplane shot down over Golan Heights
Israel shot down a Syrian warplane yesterday, saying the aircraft crossed the battle lines of Syria’s civil war and flew over the Israeli-held Golan Heights, perhaps by accident.
The incident coincided with but did not appear to be directly related to air strikes the United States and Gulf Arab allies mounted on Islamic State strongholds in Syria.
But it presented another challenge to Israel’s oft-stated desire to stay on the sidelines of a conflict on its northern doorstep, in which al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front rebels took over a border crossing on the Golan last month.
The Israeli military said its US-made Patriot missile air defence system shot down a Syrian Russian-built Sukhoi fighter plane that had “infiltrated Israeli airspace” over the territory.
It was the first time in three decades that Israel had downed a Syrian warplane. Syria described it as an act of aggression.