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 Egyptian intelligence officials met in Cairo with a high-level
Israeli delegation late on Tuesday, a day after conferring with
Palestinians who included envoys from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad
group, Egyptian officials said.
"The indirect talks between the Palestinians and Israelis are moving
forward," one Egyptian official said, making clear that the opposing
sides were not meeting face to face. "It is still too early to talk
about outcomes but we are optimistic."
Egyptian and Palestinian sources said further discussions were
expected to be held in Cairo on Wednesday, with expectations of an
initial response by Israel to Palestinian demands, which it has so
far shown no sign of accepting.
Israel withdrew ground forces from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning
and started a 72-hour Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas as a
first step towards a long-term deal.
In Gaza, where some half-million people have been displaced by a
month of bloodshed, some residents left U.N. shelters to trek back
to neighbourhoods where whole blocks have been destroyed by Israeli
shelling and the smell of decomposing bodies fills the air.
Streets in towns in southern Israel, which had been under daily
rocket fire from the Gaza Strip, were filled again with playing
children.
BLOCKADE
Palestinians want an end to the Israeli-Egyptian blockade on
impoverished Gaza and the release of prisoners, including those
Israel arrested in a June crackdown in the occupied West Bank after
three Jewish seminary students were kidnapped and killed.
Israel has resisted those demands.
"For Israel the most important issue is the issue of
demilitarisation. We must prevent Hamas from rearming, we must
demilitarise the Gaza Strip," Mark Regev, a spokesman for Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told Reuters television.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, in an interview on the BBC's
HARDtalk programme, also spoke of a need for Hamas to decommission
its rocket arsenal.
"What we want to do is support the Palestinians and their desire to
improve their lives and to be able to open crossings and get food in
and reconstruct and have greater freedom," Kerry said.
"But that has to come with a greater responsibility towards Israel,
which means giving up rockets, moving into a different plane," he
said.
Kerry said, however, all this would "finally come together" as part
of wider Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts that he has spearheaded
but which have been frozen since April over Israel's opposition to a
unity deal between Hamas and Western-backed President Mahmoud
Abbas's Palestine Liberation Organization.
Hamas, which seized the Gaza Strip from forces loyal to Abbas in
2007, has ruled out giving up its weapons.
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HUMANITARIAN AID
An Israeli official, who declined to be identified, said Israel
wanted humanitarian aid to flow to the Palestinian enclave's 1.8
million inhabitants as soon as possible.
But, the official said, the import of cement - vital for
reconstruction - would depend on achieving guarantees that it would
not be used by militants to construct more infiltration tunnels
leading into Israel and other fortifications.
Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,867 Palestinians, most of
them civilians. Israel says 64 of its soldiers and three civilians
have been killed since fighting began on July 8, after a surge in
Palestinian rocket launches.
An Israeli opinion poll, conducted after the ceasefire went into
effect, said Israelis, while not regarding the Gaza war as a victory
for their country's powerful military, remained highly supportive of
Netanyahu.
According to the poll in the Haaretz newspaper, 51 percent of those
surveyed said neither side won, while 36 percent believe that Israel
emerged victorious. Six percent said Hamas was the victor.
Of the 442 people who took part in the poll, 77 percent described
Netanyahu's performance during the war as excellent or good.
Efforts to turn the ceasefire into a lasting truce could prove
difficult, with the sides far apart on their central demands, and
each rejecting the other's legitimacy. Hamas rejects Israel's
existence and vows to destroy it, while Israel denounces Hamas as a
terrorist group and eschews any ties.
Egypt has positioned itself as a mediator in successive Gaza
conflicts but, like Israel, its current administration views Hamas
as a security threat.
Besides the loss of life, the war has cost both sides economically.
Gaza faces a massive $6-billion price tag to rebuild devastated
infrastructure. Israel has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in
tourism and other sectors and fears cuts in overall economic growth
this year as well.
Palestinian officials said a donor conference to raise funds for
Gaza's reconstruction would be held in Oslo next month.
(Additional reporting by Ali Sawafta in Ramallah and Ori Lewis in
Jerusalem; Writing by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Giles
Elgood)
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