Hamas sent a delegation to Cairo to report on progress in peace talks, but group officials said they would not take a direct part in the negotiations, which they have boycotted for the past 10 days.
Representatives of Hamas were expected to be in the Egyptian capital on Saturday, where negotiators from Israel, the United States, Egypt and Qatar were holding talks on a struggling agreement that would include the release of Israeli hostages, the release of Palestinian detainees and a ceasefire.
The delegation’s participation was confirmed in a statement by Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq, but another anonymous Hamas official quoted by French news agency AFP said the Hamas delegation would not take part in the talks.
A current sticking point in the negotiations is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that any peace agreement must allow for an Israeli presence along the Egyptian-Gaza border, a stretch known as the Philadelphia Corridor, and along the Netzarim Corridor that bisects the Gaza Strip.
Hamas rejects such a presence as a violation of the three-phase peace plan announced by Joe Biden in late May and later endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, which envisages an eventual complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Hamas says it accepts the agreement but is boycotting the current talks because the proposal has been fundamentally changed, and it denies U.S. claims that it has withdrawn from the agreement.
The White House insists the peace plan outlined by Biden has been accepted by Israel, but Netanyahu has repeatedly questioned its terms and has vowed to continue the war until Hamas is completely destroyed.
The prime minister argues that an Israeli presence in the Philadelphia Corridor is essential to prevent arms smuggling from Egypt to Hamas, but the government of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in Cairo has taken tough measures against smuggling and cross-border smuggling tunnels and argues that an Israeli presence calls into question Egypt’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
The United States claimed it had secured Israeli agreement to a compromise after Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited the region and urged Hamas to accept it, but has so far not released details of what it called a “bridging proposal.”
The US side will be represented at the Cairo talks by Central Intelligence Director William Burns and Brett McGurk, the US special envoy for the region.
As the Cairo talks continue, Israel continues its 11th-month military operation triggered by a Hamas surprise attack in southern Israel on October 7 that has killed about 1,200 people and taken another 250 hostages. More than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, many of whom are believed to have been killed.
According to Gaza health officials, more than 40,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli retaliatory military operations in Gaza. In recent weeks, Israel has ordered an increasing number of Palestinians in Gaza to evacuate, almost all of whom have already been displaced multiple times by attacks and are living in makeshift camps.
Many Palestinians who had taken refuge in areas previously designated by Israel as “humanitarian areas” were ordered to leave this month, resulting in displaced people being crammed into increasingly cramped areas with minimal food and water supplies.
The health situation continues to deteriorate, with the World Health Organization confirming the first case of polio in Gaza in more than a quarter century. An infant was left partially paralyzed by the virus but is reported to be in stable condition.
