Hamas losing faith in US as mediator

FE Team | Published: August 15, 2024 22:32:02

Some tents of displaced Palestinian people in Gaza — AP

DOHA, Aug 15 (AP/BBC): A top Hamas official said the Palestinian militant group is losing faith in the United States' ability to mediate a cease-fire in Gaza ahead of a new round of talks scheduled for this week amid mounting pressure to bring an end to the 10-month-old war with Israel.
Osama Hamdan told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday that Hamas will only participate if the talks focus on implementing a proposal detailed by U.S. President Joe Biden in May and endorsed internationally.
The U.S. referred to it as an Israeli proposal and Hamas agreed to it in principle, but Israel said Biden's speech was not entirely consistent with the proposal itself. Both sides later proposed changes, leading each to accuse the other of obstructing a deal.
Hamas is especially resistant to Israel's demand that it maintain a lasting military presence in two strategic areas of Gaza after any cease-fire, conditions only made public in recent weeks.
"We have informed the mediators that … any meeting should be based on talking about implementation mechanisms and setting deadlines rather than negotiating something new," said Hamdan, who is a member of Hamas' Political Bureau, which includes the group's top political leaders and sets its policies. "Otherwise, Hamas finds no reason to participate."
It was not clear late Wednesday if Hamas would attend the talks beginning Thursday.
Hamdan spoke amid a new push for an end to the war, sparked by the Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people and dragged about 250 hostages into Gaza. Israel responded with a devastating bombardment and ground invasion that has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians and decimated wide swaths of the territory.
There are now fears the conflict could ignite a wider conflagration.
In an hourlong interview, Hamdan accused Israel of not engaging in good faith and said the group does not believe the U.S. can or will apply pressure on Israel to seal a deal.
Hamdan claimed Israel has "either sent a non-voting delegation (to the negotiations) or changed delegations from one round to another, so we would start again, or it has imposed new conditions."
Over 40,000 killed
in Gaza war
More than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israeli military action in Gaza since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel, the Hamas-run health ministry says.
That number - 40,005 on Thursday - equates to about 1.7% of the 2.3 million population of the territory - another sobering indication of the human cost of the war.
Alongside the fatalities, satellite image analysis suggests nearly 60% of buildings in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since the beginning of the war.
In the past few months, the southern city of Rafah has suffered the most damage, imagery shows.
The health ministry's figures for the number of people killed do not differentiate between civilians and fighters.
However, its breakdown of identified reported fatalities says a majority are children, women or elderly people.
This month, Israel's military told the BBC that more than 15,000 terrorists had been killed during the war.