Negotiations on ending the Gaza conflict have inched forward on hostage releases and Israeli troop withdrawals, but the thornier issues of security and ceasefire guarantees remain unresolved.
According to two Egyptian security sources, these marathon talks, featuring a motley crew of Israeli, U.S., Egyptian, and Qatari officials, have oscillated between Cairo and Doha this week.
On Thursday, an Israeli delegation was expected to join the fray in Cairo, where Egyptian and U.S. delegations were already neck-deep in discussions. The talks aim to flesh out previously reached agreements with Hamas, but the Palestinian militant group claims it’s still in the dark, awaiting updates from the so-called mediators.
The Egyptian sources revealed that consensus has been reached on several fronts: freeing Israeli hostages, releasing Palestinian prisoners, and the phased withdrawal of Israeli forces from southern Gaza’s residential areas over six weeks. They’ve also nailed down a mechanism for governing Gaza post-conflict.
However, the talks hit a snag on the issues of security at Gaza’s border crossings and the complete pullback of Israeli troops. Hamas’s insistence on written assurances for a lasting ceasefire is still under negotiation, proving once again that in the world of diplomacy, progress is always a matter of perspective.
In this drawn-out saga, the devil is in the details—and those details are still being fiercely debated.
