Delegations Arrive in Cairo for Saturday-Sunday Negotiations on the Philadelphi Corridor / Hamas Asserts Disinterest in Negotiations, Committed to Implementing the July 2nd Proposal

Albinaa’ Newspaper Headlines August 23, 2024

The political editor wrote

The U.S. president is working tirelessly to mitigate the fallout from Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s remarks, which implied that negotiations with the occupying entity’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had concluded with the acceptance of the American proposal. Blinken suggested that all that remained was for Hamas to declare its agreement to finalise the deal. These comments sparked widespread disapproval, not only within the occupying entity and Washington but also among mediators, as they seemed to hand Netanyahu an undeserved advantage by absolving him of any responsibility for obstructing the agreement – despite the fact that the entity’s own negotiation leaders, its Defense Minister, and American media pointed out that Netanyahu had repeatedly introduced new demands. Hamas responded by accusing the Biden administration of selling out its initiative to Netanyahu and declared that the resistance was no longer interested in the negotiations. This prompted President Biden to scramble to salvage the talks – a move he sought to avoid in order to prevent Iran and the resistance from following through on their promised retaliation for the Israeli attacks on Beirut and Tehran, and the assassination of senior leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Fuad Shukr.

In response, Biden dispatched Brett McGurk, his Middle East advisor, to Cairo, while also announcing the arrival of delegations from the occupying entity carrying updated maps outlining areas where the entity insists on maintaining military positions. The upcoming round of negotiations, scheduled for Saturday and Sunday, is being touted as a critical juncture that will determine the fate of the talks, with a manufactured focus on the Philadelphi Corridor. The narrative being pushed suggests that an agreement on the disputed control of the Philadelphi Corridor would signal the birth of an overall deal. If no agreement is reached, Hamas will be blamed. However, the resistance preemptively clarified that disagreements had stalled progress even before the Philadelphi Corridor issue emerged, and that the main sticking points remain: whether the goal is a six-week truce or an end to the war, whether ending the war includes a complete withdrawal of the occupying army from Gaza and not just the Philadelphi Corridor, and whether the prisoner exchange will proceed as previously agreed, with no veto power for the occupying army over the names of those released or their destinations. These issues have always been, and continue to be, at the heart of the negotiations.

The July 2nd agreement, which was accepted by Hamas, is no longer on the table. Sources close to the negotiations suggest that the current process is a mix of stalling tactics designed to buy time and disrupt the timing of Iran and the resistance’s anticipated response, while simultaneously crafting a narrative that holds Hamas responsible for the lack of an agreement, thus absolving the occupying entity of any blame.

Meanwhile, on the Lebanese front, the resistance continues to deliver painful blows to the occupying army, which daily acknowledges the fall of rockets and drones on its bases and command centres. Despite talk of shifting the focus from the southern front to the northern front – meaning from Gaza to Lebanon – military sources in southern Lebanon report no significant new military buildup in northern occupied Palestine. The leaders of the occupying army are discussing this northern focus as a strategy for ensuring a proportionate response to the resistance’s strikes, carefully avoiding any mention of an all-out war, despite the psychological warfare efforts that some attempt to promote among the Lebanese.