Israel-Gaza ceasefire talks to resume in Cairo: Egyptian media

Talks aimed at brokering a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip will resume in Cairo on Sunday, Egyptian outlet Al-Qahera reported, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave the green light for fresh negotiations.

“An Egyptian security source confirmed to Al-Qahera News the resumption of negotiations on a truce between Israel and Hamas in the Egyptian capital Cairo tomorrow,” an anchor for the channel, which is close to country’s intelligence services, said in a broadcast on Saturday.

Egypt, Qatar and key Israeli ally the United States have mediated previous rounds of negotiations, but a workable agreement has remained elusive.

The mediators had hoped to secure a ceasefire before the start of Ramadan, but progress stalled and the Muslim holy month is more than half over.

On Friday, Netanyahu approved a new round of ceasefire negotiations to take place in Doha and Cairo.

His office said the Israeli premier had spoken to Mossad chief David Barnea about the talks, but did not elaborate on whether Barnea would be travelling to either city.

Reports of the new talks in Cairo came as protesters in Israel’s biggest city blocked a major road Saturday following demonstrations calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza and criticising the government’s handling of the war.

Militants seized about 250 hostages during the October 7 attacks on Israel that sparked the war. Of those, Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.

A key element of the ceasefire negotiations has been an agreement on releasing the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel.

France’s top diplomat was also in Cairo on Saturday for meetings with his Egyptian and Jordanian counterparts, with all three calling for an “immediate and permanent ceasefire” in Gaza and the release of all the hostages.

French foreign minister Stephane Sejourne also said his government would put forward a draft resolution at the UN Security Council setting out a “political” settlement of the war that would include “all the criteria for a two-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

On Monday, the Security Council adopted a resolution demanding an “immediate ceasefire” in Gaza, and a UN court ordered Israel on Thursday to “ensure urgent humanitarian assistance” reaches civilians there, although neither development appears to have changed the situation on the ground.

Hamas’s October 7 attacks resulted in about 1,160 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign against Hamas in the Gaza Strip has killed at least 32,705 people, most of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

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Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund has approved a US$5 billion augmentation to its loan programme for Egypt, part of a wave of global aid pledged to bolster a stumbling economy put under added pressure by the war in Gaza.

The executive board’s assent increases the Extended Fund Facility arrangement from the US$3 billion originally approved in December 2022 to US$8 billion. It will enable an immediate disbursement of about US$820 million, the Washington-based lender said on Friday in a statement.

Egypt’s new IMF agreement was announced on March 6 after authorities enacted a long-awaited currency flotation and allowed the pound to lose around 40 per cent of its value against the dollar. Funding from a US$35 billion deal with the United Arab Emirates, the largest inward investment in Egypt’s history, paved the way for the move.

“Egypt is facing significant macroeconomic challenges that have become more complex to manage given the spillovers from the recent conflict in Gaza and Israel,” IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said in the statement.

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“Recent measures toward correcting macroeconomic imbalances, including unification of the exchange rate, clearance of the foreign exchange demand backlog, and significant tightening of monetary and fiscal policies, were difficult, but critical steps forward, and efforts should be sustained going forward.”

The deal is part of more than US$50 billion in investments, loans and grants pledged to shore up the economy of a Middle Eastern nation with a key role in managing the region’s upheaval that is increasingly seen as too big to fail.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg