Ceasefire talks resume Tuesday, says senior diplomatic source

Indirect talks in Cairo between Israeli and Palestinian delegations on the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip will resume on Tuesday, according to a senior Israeli diplomatic source.

The source said Saturday that Egypt extended the invitation for Wednesday, but because of Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish new year) which begins Wednesday evening, Israel asked for the negotiations to resume on Tuesday, Channel 2 reported.

Earlier, Palestinian and Egyptian officials had said talks would resume Wednesday.

In late August, both sides agreed a ceasefire that ended 50 days of deadly conflict and provided for a resumption of negotiations within a month to discuss unresolved issues.

These include the construction of a port and restoring the territory’s airport, and exchanging Palestinian prisoners for the remains of Israeli soldiers.

“Egypt has invited Palestinian and Israeli delegations to resume talks in Cairo on September 24,” a Palestinian official said Saturday.

An Egyptian official added that Fatah, which dominates the Palestinian Authority headed by President Mahmoud Abbas, and Hamas had been invited to meet on Monday for talks on Palestinian unity.

Last week, Hamas’s exiled political chief Khaled Mashaal said Israel understood only force, prompting Israeli officials to question whether the indirect talks would resume at all.

Mashaal had ruled out face-to-face dealings with the Israelis a day earlier.

“Direct negotiations with the Israeli occupier are not on the agenda of Hamas; if negotiations are necessary they must be indirect,” he said.

Israel has only negotiated directly with Abbas’s Palestinian Authority. Backed by the so-called Middle East Quartet of the US, EU, UN and Russia, it demands that Hamas recognize Israel, accept previous agreements and renounce terrorism as preconditions for direct negotiations with the Islamist group.

Mashaal also rejected Israeli demands that Gaza reconstruction be linked to the disarmament of Hamas and Gaza-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh restated that line.

Fifty days of deadly fighting between Israel and terrorists in Gaza that killed approximately 2,100 Palestinians — about 1,000 of them combatants, Israel says — and 72 Israelis, ended on August 26 with an open-ended truce agreement. Israel said it would ease restrictions on movement of personnel and goods through the two crossings into Gaza which it controls, but core issues of dispute were set to be negotiated in indirect talks in Cairo after a month.

During the conflict, Hamas fired 4,600 rockets at Israel, mainly into the south, and killed 11 soldiers when its gunmen emerged from some of the attack tunnels it had dug under the border.

Under the terms of the ceasefire deal, the parties agreed to resume the Egyptian-brokered negotiations to discuss, among other issues, a Hamas demand for a port and an airport, a prisoner swap and Israel’s insistence on Gaza terrorists disarming. Israel has ruled out removing controls over access to Gaza, as has Egypt, unless or until Hamas disarms, which Hamas refuses to do. Hamas, designated a terrorist group by Israel and much of the international community, seized control of Gaza in a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority in 2007.

On October 12, Cairo is set to host an international donor conference on the reconstruction of Gaza, amid warnings that the PA should manage the work and the funds allocated to it, urging Hamas to hand over power in Gaza to the authority.