CAIRO: Hamas’s top negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrived in Egypt on Sunday at the head of a delegation, the Palestinian movement said, set to engage in indirect talks with Israel for a hostage-prisoner exchange and a ceasefire in Gaza.
The meetings set to take place Monday in the Egyptian resort town of Sharm Al-Sheikh will be Hayya’s first since Israel targeted him and other Hamas leaders in strikes on Doha last month.
He broke his silence earlier on Sunday with a pre-recorded TV appearance that aired in Qatar, which had mediated successive rounds of talks along with Egypt and the United States.
The Palestinian movement said the delegation led by Hayya arrived in Egypt “to begin negotiations on mechanisms for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of occupation forces and a prisoner exchange.”
Both Hamas and Israel have responded positively to US President Donald Trump’s roadmap for an end to the fighting and the release of captives in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, though the details remain to be ironed out.
The Israeli delegation will depart for Sharm El-Sheikh on Monday, according to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
Trump has sent two emissaries to help finalize the deal: his special envoy Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law Jared Kushner.
Hayya had made no mention of the talks or a possible ceasefire in his address Sunday, in which he mourned his son and five others who were killed in the Doha strike.
Hamas’s top officials are believed to have survived the targeted strike on Doha, which killed six people and sparked a wave of criticism, along with a rebuke from US President Donald Trump and an apology to Qatar from Netanyahu.
Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrives in Egypt ahead of talks: statement
https://arab.news/p3u7x
Hamas chief negotiator Khalil Al-Hayya arrives in Egypt ahead of talks: statement
- Khalil Al-Hayya broke his silence earlier on Sunday with a pre-recorded TV appearance that aired in Qatar
- Both Hamas and Israel have responded positively to US President Donald Trump’s roadmap for Gaza
US lawmakers press Israel to probe strike on reporters in Lebanon
- “The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said
- Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured
WASHINGTON: Several Democratic lawmakers called Thursday for the Israeli and US governments to fully investigate a deadly 2023 attack by the Israeli military on journalists in southern Lebanon.
The October 13, 2023 airstrike killed Reuters videographer Issam Abdallah and wounded six other reporters, including two from AFP — video journalist Dylan Collins and photographer Christina Assi, who lost her leg.
“We expect the Israeli government to conduct an investigation that meets the international standards and to hold accountable those people who did this,” Senator Peter Welch told a news conference, with Collins by his side.
The lawmaker from Collins’s home state of Vermont said he had been pushing for answers for two years, first from the administration of Democratic president Joe Biden and now from the Republican White House of Donald Trump.
The Israeli government has “stonewalled at every single turn,” Welch added.
“With the Israeli government, we have been extremely patient, and we have done everything we reasonably can to obtain answers and accountability,” he said.
“The IDF has made no effort, none, to seriously investigate this incident,” Welch said, referring to the Israeli military, adding that it has told his office its investigation into the incident is closed.
Collins called for Washington to publicly acknowledge the attack in which an American citizen was injured.
“But I’d also like them to put pressure on their greatest ally in the Middle East, the Israeli government, to bring the perpetrators to account,” he said, echoing the lawmakers who called the attack a “war crime.”
“We’re not letting it go,” Vermont congresswoman Becca Balint said. “It doesn’t matter how long they stonewall us.”
AFP conducted an independent investigation which concluded that two Israeli 120mm tank shells were fired from the Jordeikh area in Israel.
The findings were corroborated by other international probes, including investigations conducted by Reuters, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and Reporters Without Borders.
Unlike Welch’s assertion Thursday that the Israeli probe was over, the IDF told AFP in October that “findings regarding the event have not yet been concluded.”
