Talks begin in Egypt on Trump plan to end Gaza war
Delegations from Israel, Hamas and the US began indirect negotiations in Cairo today that the US hopes will pave the way for an end to the war in Gaza, facing contentious issues such as demands that Israel pull out of the enclave and Hamas to disarm.
Israel and Hamas have both endorsed the overall principles behind Donald Trump’s plan, under which fighting would cease, hostages go free and aid pour into Gaza. The delegations are also expected to discuss key stipulations of the plan, including “Israeli military withdrawal lines in Gaza and the names of high-profile Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the remaining 48 hostages”, per the Wall Street Journal.
The plan has the backing of Arab and western states. Trump has called for negotiations to take place swiftly towards a final deal, in what Washington hails as the closest the sides have yet come to ending the conflict.
Last night wrote on Truth Social that talks were “proceeding rapidly” in the lead-up to today’s meeting. “I am told that the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” Trump said. He has also warned of “MASSIVE BLOODSHED” if a deal is not finalized in the coming days.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the path to bringing the conflict to a close would come in two phases: the first includes the coming meetings and working out logistics of the hostage release. “But that work is happening even as I speak to you this very moment,” he said.
The second, harder part, he added, is working out what happens inside Gaza after Israel withdraws to the agreed upon lines. The plan includes creating a Palestinian technocratic leadership in Gaza.
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Updated at 19.02 CEST
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As Hamas and Israel began indirect talks today in Sharm El-Sheikh on ending the war in Gaza under the plan put forward by Donald Trump, Al-Qahera News, which is linked to Egyptian state intelligence, reports that the delegations “are discussing preparing ground conditions for the release of detainees and prisoners”.
“Egyptian and Qatari mediators are working with both sides to establish a mechanism” for the release of hostages held in Gaza in exchange for Palestinians held in Israeli jails, it added.
Behind closed doors and under tight security, negotiators are to speak through mediators shuttling back and forth, only weeks after Israel tried to kill Hamas’s lead negotiators in a strike on Qatar’s capital.
Hamas’s lead negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who survived Israel’s attack in Doha last month, held a meeting with Egyptian intelligence officials ahead of the talks, an Egyptian security source said.
This round of negotiations, launched on the eve of the second anniversary of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, “may last for several days”, said a Palestinian source close to Hamas’s leadership.
“We expect the negotiations to be difficult and complex, given the occupation’s intentions to continue its war of extermination,” he told AFP.
As we’ve been reporting, Trump, whose envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner are expected in Egypt, has urged negotiators to “move fast” to end the war in Gaza, where Israeli strikes continued on Monday, killing at least seven Palestinian people, despite Trump’s order to stop.
According to AFP’s Palestinian source, the initial hostage-prisoner exchange will “require several days, depending on field conditions related to Israeli withdrawals, the cessation of bombardment and the suspension of all types of air operations”.
Negotiations will look to “determine the date of a temporary truce”, a Hamas official said, as well as create conditions for a first phase of the plan, in which 47 hostages held in Gaza are to be released in return for 1,700 of Palestinian detainees.
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Updated at 21.34 CEST
Putin and Netanyahu discussed Trump’s Gaza plan, says Kremlin
Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the situation in the Middle East, including Donald Trump’s proposal for ending the war in Gaza, in a phone call on Monday, the Kremlin has said.
Putin voiced Russia’s “consistent position in favour of a comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian issue based on the well-known international legal principles,” the Kremlin said.
The two leaders also expressed interest in finding negotiated solutions to the situation around the Iranian nuclear programme, a spokesperson said.
They also reportedly discussed stabilisation efforts in Syria (where Russia propped up the regime of Bashar al Assad before he was overthrown in December last year).
Putin has backed Trump’s plan for Gaza and said he hopes it will be successfully implemented. The Russian president has also reiterated Moscow’s support for an independent Palestinian state as a pivotal part of any peace settlement.
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Updated at 20.52 CEST
Lisa O’Carroll
The first Scottish citizen to be deported back from Israel after travelling on a flotilla carrying aid to Gaza has described her experience in jail as “absolute hell”.
Margaret Pacetta, 71, who arrived back into Glasgow Central station on Monday evening, said her treatment in Israel’s notorious Ktzi’ot prison was “vile”. She told the Scottish Herlad that Israeli forces took everything away from her, including her medication, glasses, hearing aids and clothes.
Prisoners were given just small amounts of ant-covered cucumber and stale bread to survive on inside the prison, she added.
The pensioner is one of four Scots who were on board the flotilla that was attempting to take food to the people of Gaza but were blocked off by the IDF who help them in jail before deporting them via Istanbul.
Jim Hickey, Yvonne Ridley and Sid Khan were the others but it is unknown when they will return to Scotland.
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Updated at 20.09 CEST
Leavitt is asked if the Trump administration would recognise a Palestinian state if Hamas agrees to cede power to a transitional technocratic government in Gaza.
She declines to “get ahead of the technical talks”.
“This is, we expect and we hope, going to be one of the greatest peace deals this world has ever seen,” she adds.
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Updated at 20.53 CEST
White House hopes quick hostage release will create momentum for rest of Trump’s Gaza plan
Leavitt is asked again how long she expects the technical talks to last. She declines to “draw a red line” on that.
She says again that it’s important to get this done “quickly” for purposes of “momentum to get the hostages out and then move to the next part of this which is really ensuring that we can get a lasting and durable peace in Gaza, and ensure that Gaza is a place that no longer threatens the security of Israel or the United States”.
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Updated at 20.48 CEST
White House wants Gaza plan talks to move ‘very quickly’
Leavitt is asked if Trump has a new deadline for the first phase (working out the logistics for the hostages to be released) to be implemented.
She clarifies that the Sunday deadline had been for Hamas to respond to Trump’s proposal.
She doesn’t give a specific new time frame for the technical talks that are underway, saying only that “we want to move very quickly on this and the president wants to see the hostages released as soon as possible”.
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Updated at 19.41 CEST
Asked about the Cairo talks at the White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt says the Trump administration “is working very hard to move the ball forward as quickly as we can”.
She says Donald Trump wants to see a ceasefire and the hostages released. “The technical teams are discussing that as we speak to ensure that the environment is perfect to release those hostages,” she says.
She adds that the teams are going over the lists of the Israeli hostages and also the Palestinians political prisoners who will be released.
“Those talks are underway, and the president is very much on the ball and is being apprised of this situation,” she says.
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Updated at 19.43 CEST
Lisa O’Carroll
Mothers Against Genocide Scotland have said one of the Scottish citizens on the Global Sumud Flotilla, Margaret Pacetta, was on her way home to Glasgow.
MAGS have been campaigning for five Scottish citizens who were detained last week and say they are “desperately awaiting news” on two others, Sid Khan and Jim Hickey.
They have not had any update about a fourth, journalist and author Yvonne Ridley, but the fifth, student Mina Moreno, was in touch with home two days ago and is believed to be safe, they said.
Pacetta, 71, told Citizen Media France on Saturday: “That prison was awful; no food and no water. My broken leg, the girl said to me ‘what happened [with] your broken leg?’. I said ‘It’s broke, she slammed a metal door on [and] went ‘sorry’,” adding “we are fine, we are fine”.
A supporter of Ridley said they not received any communication yet from the former journalist but were “hopeful”.
The Global Sumud Flotilla said on Sunday evening they had lost track of Ridley during the transfer to Istanbul.
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Updated at 20.10 CEST
We’ll be hearing shortly from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt and there will likely be some questions regarding today’s crucial talks in Cairo.
I’ll bring you any relevant news lines here once the press briefing gets going.
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“We are not even seeing the bare minimum from our governments,” the activist Greta Thunberg said after her release by Israel.
She has arrived in Greece after she and another 170 people were deported for taking part in a Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
‘Our systems are betraying Palestinians,’ says Greta Thunberg after Israel deportation – videoShare
German chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke on the phone with Israel’s president Isaac Herzog on Monday and expressed hope that an agreement on the release of the hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza could be reached within the next few days, a German government spokesperson said.
The talks in Egypt must now lead to a swift agreement, and Hamas should lay down its arms, the spokesperson said.
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‘We are not even seeing the bare minimum from our governments’, says Thunberg after release
Activist Greta Thunberg has arrived in Greece after she and another 170 people were deported by Israel for taking part in the Gaza-bound aid flotilla.
Speaking to the media, she said:
Let me be very clear; there is a genocide going on in front of our very eyes, a live-streamed genocide on all of our phones.
No-one has the privilege to say we are not aware of what is happening. No-one is the future will be able to say we did not know.
Under international law, states have a legal obligation to prevent and to stop a genocide from happening.
That means ending complicity, applying real pressure and ending arms transfers. We are not seeing that, we are not even seeing the bare minimum from our governments.
She goes on to say she will “never comprehend” how humans can be so “evil” to starve the people of Gaza. The global flotilla aimed to “step up when our governments failed to do so,” Thunberg adds.
Greta Thunberg in Athens. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/ReutersShare
Updated at 18.04 CEST
Talks begin in Egypt on Trump plan to end Gaza war
Delegations from Israel, Hamas and the US began indirect negotiations in Cairo today that the US hopes will pave the way for an end to the war in Gaza, facing contentious issues such as demands that Israel pull out of the enclave and Hamas to disarm.
Israel and Hamas have both endorsed the overall principles behind Donald Trump’s plan, under which fighting would cease, hostages go free and aid pour into Gaza. The delegations are also expected to discuss key stipulations of the plan, including “Israeli military withdrawal lines in Gaza and the names of high-profile Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the remaining 48 hostages”, per the Wall Street Journal.
The plan has the backing of Arab and western states. Trump has called for negotiations to take place swiftly towards a final deal, in what Washington hails as the closest the sides have yet come to ending the conflict.
Last night wrote on Truth Social that talks were “proceeding rapidly” in the lead-up to today’s meeting. “I am told that the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” Trump said. He has also warned of “MASSIVE BLOODSHED” if a deal is not finalized in the coming days.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the path to bringing the conflict to a close would come in two phases: the first includes the coming meetings and working out logistics of the hostage release. “But that work is happening even as I speak to you this very moment,” he said.
The second, harder part, he added, is working out what happens inside Gaza after Israel withdraws to the agreed upon lines. The plan includes creating a Palestinian technocratic leadership in Gaza.
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Updated at 19.02 CEST
Lorenzo Tondo
International activists, journalists and lawyers deported from Israel after attempting to breach the 16-year maritime blockade of Gaza as part of a humanitarian flotilla have alleged being subjected to brutal physical and verbal abuse by Israeli forces during their detention.
The alleged abuses included sleep and medication deprivation, beatings, having automatic rifles pointed at their heads, dogs set upon them, having to sleep on the floor, being subjected to insults and being made to watch footage of the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023.
“I was beaten from the moment we entered the port until the very end,” said Saverio Tommasi, an Italian journalist. “Blows to my back, blows to my head – and they [the Israeli soldiers] laughed, laughed at all of it. Anyone who failed to keep their eyes down was punished with a hit to the head.”
Israeli forces intercepted all the boats of the Global Sumud flotilla (GSF), carrying more than 400 people including parliamentarians and the environmental campaigner Greta Thunberg, last week. Most of the people were held at Ketziot, a high-security prison in the Negev desert used primarily to detain Palestinians whom Israel accuses of involvement in terrorist activities.
Israel’s foreign ministry has dismissed all claims of mistreatment of members of the flotilla as “brazen lies”, posting on X on Sunday evening: “All the detainees’ legal rights are fully upheld.”
The national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, has said he was “proud” of the way staff behaved at Ketziot. He said in a statement on the activists: “They should get a good feel for the conditions in Ketziot prison and think twice before they approach Israel again.”
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German foreign minister Johann Wadephul said on Monday that the first phase of US president Donald Trump’s plans to halt the war in Gaza must be achieved by the start of next week at the latest but added that all the other issues would need time.
The first phase aims at a ceasefire, release of hostages and prisoners, restraint in the military conflict and bringing in supplies to Gaza – all of which are feasible, said Wadephul.
“All other issues are very complicated and, indeed, that is why they also need time,” said Wadephul at a press conference in Tel Aviv.
“We must not abandon all diplomatic efforts, but I would like to focus now on taking this first decisive step together.”
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