OCCUPIED JERUSALEM: Indirect talks between Israelis and Palestinians on consolidating the Gaza truce are set to resume in Cairo on Wednesday, two days after new reconciliation negotiations between Fatah and Hamas, officials said.
On August 26, both sides agreed a truce that ended 50 days of deadly conflict in the enclave and provided for a resumption of negotiations within a month to discuss unresolved issues.
These include the construction of a seaport and restoring the territory’s airport, and exchanging Palestinian prisoners for the remains of Israeli soldiers.
The indirect talks between the Israelis and a delegation of all Palestinian groups will be preceded by talks between the two heavyweights of Palestinian politics, the Fatah faction of president Mahmoud Abbas and its Islamist rival, Hamas.
“Egypt has invited Palestinian and Israeli delegations to resume talks in Cairo on September 24,” a Palestinian official said.
The Israelis said on Sunday they would send a delegation to attend the talks, although a minister said they would likely achieve nothing.
Egypt, which has played a key role in the talks, had initially invited both sides to resume talks on Wednesday but it was pulled forward because of Jewish New Year which begins at sundown on September 24 and runs into the weekend.
The negotiations are to tackle a number of unresolved issues including a Palestinian demand for a seaport and airport in Gaza, and the Israeli demand for fighters in the territory to disarm.
Azzam Al Ahmad, head of the cross-party Palestinian negotiating team, confirmed that talks had been brought forward due to the Jewish New Year.
“The Jewish holidays will start on Wednesday, so we hope that a meeting between the two delegations will take place on Tuesday, for discussing issues postponed until this meeting,” he told Voice of Palestine radio.
But an Israeli minister close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the talks were unlikely to achieve anything beyond agreement on certain elements of rebuilding the battered Gaza Strip.
“I don’t have very high hopes for the talks in Cairo as long as Hamas won’t agree to demilitarise Gaza and give up its weapons,” Strategic Affairs Minister Yuval Steinitz told reporters at the start of the weekly cabinet meeting.
“Unfortunately, I don’t see it accepting these principles, so, apart from the immediate rehabilitation [of the enclave], there is no real, long-term solution to the situation in Gaza,” he said.
“There is a long-term ceasefire already in place, a truce which is not limited in time,” he said, suggesting there was little more to be achieved.
Observers say the outcome of this week’s truce talks will hinge largely on what is agreed at the Hamas-Fatah meeting, which will focus heavily on the future governance of Gaza by the Ramallah-based national consensus government.
The deal sought to end years of bitter and sometimes bloody rivalry between Hamas and Fatah, which dominates the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority.
A new cabinet took office on June 2, with Gaza’s Hamas government officially stepping down the same day.
But early this month Abbas accused Hamas of running a parallel administration in Gaza.
“We won’t accept a partnership with them if the situation continues like this in Gaza, where there is a shadow government... running the territory,” he said.
Khaled Meshaal, the exiled leader of Hamas, denied the accusation.
“There is a national unity government; talk of a parallel government is totally against reality,” Meshaal said on a trip to Tunisia.
