US envoys meet Hamas in Cairo to salvage fragile Gaza truce
Al Jazeera
Rare US-Hamas talks come as the war on Iran strains the battered Gaza ‘ceasefire’ and post-war plans.
In a devastated enclave where more than two million Palestinians remain crammed into a shrinking strip of land under the overwhelming shadow of Israeli military occupation and bombardment, daily survival is tethered to a fragile October “ceasefire”.
But as Israeli and US bombs rain down on Iran, and Tehran retaliates across the region, that battered truce faces a breaking point, prompting an unprecedented diplomatic manoeuvre: direct talks between United States President Donald Trump’s “Board of Peace” and Hamas.
Envoys from the new body, personally headed by Trump to oversee post-war Gaza, but with more far-reaching designs, met with Hamas representatives in the Egyptian capital over the weekend, according to the Reuters news agency.
The meetings aimed to safeguard the “ceasefire”, which has been under even more severe strain since the regional war began on February 28.
Following the talks, Israel announced it would partially reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt on Wednesday. The crossing, Gaza’s sole pedestrian lifeline outside direct Israeli control, was shut when the Iran offensive began.
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Arab states in the Gulf and beyond that house US assets have been targeted in Iranian retaliatory strikes in the war.
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