Hamas to head to Cairo for ceasefire talks. “something is beginning to move” in the direction of a truce

File photo: A Palestinian man ferries water at a makeshift camp for displaced people in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on April 4, 2024.  © Mohammed Abed, AFP

A Hamas delegation headed by the group’s deputy chief in Gaza will go to Cairo on Sunday for ceasefire talks, the group said in a statement on Saturday but noted it refuses to “back down” from a set of truce demands it made in March. Earlier today, the Israeli army said it had recovered the body of a hostage in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis who had been killed in captivity.

Summary:

• Israel’s army said on Saturday its troops recovered the body of a hostage abducted by Palestinian militants during the October 7 attacks on southern Israel. “The body of the abductee Elad Katzir … was rescued overnight from Khan Younis and returned to Israeli territory”, the army said in a statement.                                                 
• The Israeli military’s killing of seven aid workers in Gaza has triggered unprecedented criticism from European leaders, who are stepping up calls for a ceasefire and in some cases halting arms sales to Israel as the war’s toll mounts.                                                                                                                                                           
• Australia‘s Foreign Minister Penny Wong said Saturday that information from Israel about the death of an Australian aid worker killed in a Gaza air strike was “not sufficient”.                         
• At least 33,137 Palestinians have been killed and 75,815 wounded since Israel began its offensive on Gaza, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run enclave. Around 1,170 people were killed in the Hamas-led October 7 attacks and 250 people taken hostage, according to Israeli figures, with 132 still missing.
• As the Hamas-Israel war reaches its half-year mark on Sunday, US, Israeli, and Hamas negotiators are set to be in Cairo in a renewed push for a ceasefire and hostage-release deal. FRANCE 24’s chief foreign editor Rob Parsons says that Hamas’s participation in the talks could show that “something is beginning to move” in the direction of a truce. Palestinian movement Hamas on Saturday said it refuses to “back down” from its previous demands for a Gaza ceasefire.
• The United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief, Martin Griffiths, on Saturday, decried Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza as a “betrayal of humanity”. He called for a “collective determination that there be a reckoning for this betrayal of humanity”. He is referring to the group’s demands that include a complete ceasefire in Gaza and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian territory.

FRANCE24/AFP