Egypt hosted a meeting with Israeli and US officials in Cairo on Sunday, to discuss re-opening the Rafah border crossing, while the Israeli military pursued its strikes across the Gaza Strip.
Egyptian, Israeli and US officials meeting in Cairo Sunday “ended” their discussions on reopening Gaza’s Rafah crossing, state-linked Egyptian media said, without elaborating on the talks.
The Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border, a vital conduit for aid into the besieged Gaza Strip where famine looms after nearly eight months of war, has been closed since Israeli forces seized its Palestinian side in early May.
Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian intelligence, quoted a senior official as saying that during Sunday’s meeting, “the Egyptian security delegation affirmed Israel’s full responsibility for humanitarian aid not entering the Gaza Strip.”
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Cairo has refused to coordinate humanitarian assistance through the crossing since the Israeli takeover.
The official quoted by Al-Qahera said Egypt reiterated its demand that “Israel withdraw from the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing so it can resume operations.”
The report did not say whether the talks in Cairo had produced an agreement.
After discussion with US President Joe Biden last month, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has agreed to temporarily divert aid from Rafah by sending it into Gaza via Israel’s nearby Kerem Shalom crossing.
The senior official said Egypt had called for “immediate action to bring at least 350 aid trucks into the Strip every day.”
The United Nations says a daily minimum of 500 trucks are needed to meet Gazans’ basic needs.
Aid has slowed to a trickle in recent weeks, as authorities in Gaza have warned of a rise in deadly malnutrition across the war-ravaged territory amid ongoing Israeli bombardment.
Helicopter Strikes
Deadly fighting rocked Gaza overnight and Sunday, with the Israeli military reporting more air strikes and ground combat.
Across Gaza, the military said Sunday it had struck “30 terror targets” over the past day including “weapons storage facilities” and militants.
Heavy fighting has flared in far-southern Rafah, where Israel sent tanks and troops in early May, ignoring concerns for displaced civilians sheltering in the city.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Sunday that all 36 of its shelters in Rafah “are now empty,” after at least a million civilians have fled the city that until last month was sheltering 1.4 million people.
“The humanitarian space continues to shrink,” UNRWA said, adding that about 1.7 million people were now sheltering in southern Gaza’s main city of Khan Younis and in central areas of the territory.
Witnesses said Israeli Apache attack helicopters on Sunday opened fire on targets in central Rafah, a jet fired a missile at a house in the western Tal al-Sultan district and artillery shelling targeted the southern Brazil neighborhood.
There were also ongoing clashes in Rafah including fighting in the city center and drone attacks, witnesses told AFP.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said it was “very difficult” to access the city, on the border with Egypt, because of the Israeli bombardment, adding that two of its staff had been killed on Friday by Israeli fire.
In the besieged territory’s north, Israeli helicopters fired at Gaza City’s Zeitun and Sabra areas, and an air strike hit a house in the city’s east, AFP reporters said.
A hospital medic said three people were killed when an air strike hit a family apartment in Gaza City’s Daraj neighborhood.
And in central Gaza, artillery shelling hit areas of Deir al-Balah and the Bureij and Nuseirat refugee camps, witnesses said.
Truce talks
The United States said Sunday that if Hamas accepts the proposed multi-phase Gaza truce plan outlined by President Joe Biden, it expects Israel to follow suit.
“This was an Israeli proposal. We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal, as was transmitted to them, an Israeli proposal, that Israel would say yes,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told ABC News.
The blueprint was transmitted to Hamas on Thursday night Washington time, Kirby said on the “This Week” talk show.
“We’re waiting for an official response from Hamas,” he added.
Hamas has said it “views positively” the three-stage plan.
Presenting it on Friday, Biden said the offer would begin with a six-week phase that would see Israeli forces withdraw from all populated areas of the Gaza Strip and an initial hostage-prisoner exchange.
Israel and the Palestinians would then negotiate for a lasting ceasefire, with the truce to continue so long as talks are ongoing, Biden said, adding it was “time for this war to end.”
With AFP
