CIA director heading to Egypt for Gaza truce talks
CIA Director Williams Burns is expected in the Egyptian capital, Cairo today for a new round of talks aimed at securing a ceasefire in Gaza, according to the Al Ahram Weekly.
Burns’s visit comes days after he held meetings with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani and Israeli and Egyptian security officials in Qatar’s capital, Doha. As those meetings took place, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi announced that Cairo had proposed a limited two-day truce to exchange four Israeli captives held by Hamas for some Palestinian prisoners.
And as we’ve been reporting, US President Joe Biden’s Middle East advisers, Amos Hochstein and Brett McGurk, are also expected in Israel today for talks on a truce deal between Israel and Lebanon.
Gaza ceasefire talks just ‘campaign fodder’ for US elections
Hafsa Halawa of the Middle East Institute talks about why she thinks the Gaza ceasefire negotiations in Qatar are no more than political posturing by US Democrats eager to win the November 5 presidential election.
Hamas official says group rejects short-term Gaza truce: Report
A senior Hamas official says the group rejects any proposal for a temporary halt to more than a year of fighting in Gaza and insists on a lasting ceasefire, according to AFP news agency.
“The idea of a temporary pause in the war, only to resume aggression later, is something we have already expressed our position on. Hamas supports a permanent end to the war, not a temporary one,” Taher al-Nunu, a senior leader of the movement, told AFP.
Mediators seeking to broker a Gaza ceasefire are expected to propose a truce of “less than a month” to Hamas, a source with knowledge of the talks told AFP on Wednesday.
Saudi Arabia says normalization with Israel is “off the table” without Palestinian statehood
The prospect of Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel is “off the table” without the Palestinians being granted an independent state, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan told CNN’s Becky Anderson in Riyadh.
“Normalization with the Kingdom of the Saudi Arabia is not just at risk (for Israel), it’s off the table until we have a resolution to Palestinian statehood,” he said. “I would say more than that, it’s not just the issue of normalization with the kingdom that is at risk, I would say the security of the region as a whole is at risk if we do not address the rights of the Palestinians.”
Prince Faisal was reiterating a policy laid out by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last month, when he told the country’s Shura Council that the kingdom will not establish diplomatic relations with Israel without a Palestinian state.
The Biden administration has made Israel-Saudi normalization one its key Middle East policy goals. The US and Saudi Arabia had engaged in discussions on the pact in 2023, and Secretary of State Antony Blinken was expected to fly to Riyadh on October 10 of last year to discuss the details, just three days before Hamas attacked Israel, derailing the effort.
Saudi Arabia and the US were negotiating a potential landmark defense agreement over the past year that was pursuant on Saudi normalization with Israel.
“There is one element of the bilateral agreements that we’re working on that is tied to normalization. … The Crown Prince made very clear what would be required for the kingdom to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. … Absent that we’re very happy to wait until the situation is amenable,” he said.
Last edited by SvennoJ - on 31 October 2024
