Hamas delegation heads to Egypt for ‘do or die’ Gaza ceasefire talks

CAIRO: Hamas said its delegation was heading to Cairo on Saturday to resume Gaza truce talks, as the United Nations warned that Israel’s threatened assault on the city of Rafah could produce a “bloodbath”.

International peacekeepers have been awaiting the Palestinian group’s response to a plan to cease hostilities for forty days and swap detainees for hostages.

“Hamas is the only entity preventing the people of Gaza from enjoying a ceasefire,” stated US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday.

Negotiations have been stuck for months due in part to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s repeated threats to destroy Hamas’s last fighters in Rafah and the organization’s demand for an indefinite truce.

Along with restating Washington’s opposition to the long-threatening Rafah offensive, Blinken said on Friday that Israel has not offered a strategy to safeguard the people who are seeking cover there.

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“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” he said. Humanitarian groups and the United Nations have also begged Israel to call off an attack on Rafah, where 1.2 million people have sought refuge.

On Friday, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that an incursion into the far-southern city could have dire implications. “WHO is deeply concerned that a full-scale military operation in Rafah, Gaza, could lead to a bloodbath, and further weaken an already broken health system,” Tedros said on X, formerly Twitter.

The UN’s health agency announced it was nevertheless making contingency plans, restoring health facilities and pre-positioning supplies. “This contingency plan is Band-Aids. The ailing health system will not be able to withstand the potential scale of devastation that the incursion will cause,” said Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories.