Hamas official says there is progress in negotiations

A senior Hamas official says on Wednesday there had been progress in negotiations to end the Gaza conflict but the Islamist militants needed detailed guarantees that Israel would ease its blockade of the enclave.

Talks to end the 16-day conflict have intensified with US Secretary of State John Kerry shuttling between Jerusalem and Cairo in a bid to forge a truce.

Hamas, which sparked the conflict by firing rockets from Gaza into Israel, had rejected an Egyptian proposal that called for a ceasefire first and then negotiations.

The Hamas official acknowledged that the militants realized that getting Israel to end the eight-year siege in tandem with a ceasefire was unrealistic.

“There needs to be an agreement on the principles, the schedule (for ending the blockade) and the mechanism,” the official says.

Hamas’s chief Khaled Meshaal on Wednesday again insisted on a ceasefire only after an end to the siege, in force since militants kidnapped an Israeli soldier in 2006.

The official, who works closely with Meshaal, says however that they understood that the blockade would be eased only after the ceasefire, but they required a schedule in place first.

The conflict has killed 659 Palestinians, 34 Israelis and a Thai worker in Israel. Jerusalem had earlier accepted the Egyptian ceasefire offer.

The Hamas official said he hoped the negotiations would bear fruit “in a few days.”

“The atmosphere in the talks is positive,” he told AFP in a telephone interview.

— AFP