Hamas delegation leaves Cairo after Israel ‘thwarted’ negotiation attempts
A Hamas delegation has left Cairo with the group saying ceasefire talks will continue until an agreement is reached.
Earlier, an official from the Palestinian group told the Reuters news agency that negotiations in Cairo failed to achieve a breakthrough as Israel rejected the group’s demands to end its offensive in the enclave, withdraw its forces, and ensure freedom of entry for aid and the return of displaced people.
Israel “thwarted” all attempts by mediators to reach an agreement, Sami Abu Zuhri said.
Netanyahu wants ‘Armageddon’, says former Israeli PM
Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli PM and a fierce critic of Netanyahu, has warned that the current Israeli leader could jeopardise the country’s longstanding peace treaty with Egypt if he expands military operations into Rafah.
Speaking on the Haaretz Podcast, Olmert said Netanyahu and his allies in the war cabinet have no interest in stopping the war and even want to go further by inflaming tensions in the occupied West Bank.
Netanyahu and his cohort want “Armageddon that will make it possible to expel many of the Palestinians in the West Bank”, said Olmert.
EU to review Israel’s human rights compliance in Gaza
The European Union has agreed to launch a probe into whether Israel is complying with human rights obligations stipulated in its trade deal with the bloc, according to the EU’s top diplomat.
Josep Borrell, in a blog post, said the Spanish and and Irish governments have asked European institutions to check whether Israel’s actions in Gaza comply with the human rights clauses in the EU-Israel Association Agreement. “We will carry out this work,” he said.
The accord, signed in 2000, sets out a framework for free trade in goods, services and capital, based on “respect for human rights and democratic principles”.
Israel’s aims in Gaza appear to ‘go beyond destroying Hamas’: EU top diplomat
More on Josep Borrell’s announcement of an EU probe into Israel’s compliance with rights obligations in Gaza. The EU’s top diplomat used strong language to denounce Israeli actions in the Palestinian territory.
He expressed concern over Israel’s killing of more than 100 Palestinian aid seekers and said the incident shows that “the international community needs to take decisive steps to save Gazan civilians from both starvation and violence”.
After five months of war, “the actions of the Israeli government in Gaza give the impression that its objectives go beyond destroying Hamas”, Borrell said, quoting an Israeli general who pledged to “turn Gaza into a place that is temporarily or permanently impossible to live in”.
“And indeed,” Borrell said, “almost everything that allows a human society to function has been destroyed: civil register, property register, cultural and health infrastructure, most of the schools built by UNRWA”.
In addition to taking steps to end the fighting, the international community must also help secure a state for the Palestinian people, he said. “Despite the refusal of the Netanyahu government, the international community is united on the question of the two-state solution and will have to advance swiftly on its implementation,” he wrote.
