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On Monday, Palestinian movement Hamas said that no serious effort for a truce deal had been made, and that it will not agree a truce deal without concessions made by Israel.
“Talk of a ceasefire requires real and serious efforts, which we haven’t seen so far”, Hamas legislative member Mushir al-Masri said.
He added that Hamas will only negotiate if Israel agrees to several concessions, some of which include lifting Israel’s blockade on Gaza, opening the Rafah crossing to Egypt and releasing Palestinian prisoners Israel had re-arrested after it initially freed them in exchange for abducted Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit.
“Any ceasefire must be based on the conditions we have outlined, nothing less than that will be accepted,” Masri said. He added that “Arab countries and Islamic countries and Western countries” were involved in talks for a truce, before cautioning that Hamas was prepared to continue battling, and was prepared for a “long, drawn-out battle”.
For a while now, several international calls for a ceasefire have been made. U.S. Secretary John Kerry is due to arrive in Cairo on Tuesday, where he will hold talks regarding the current crisis. The EU said that it was in touch with “all parties in the region”, and has pressed for an immediate stop to the worst hostilities in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict since 2012.
Meanwhile, two members of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s security cabinet also gave comments which seemed to suggest that a truce might be reached.
“There are contacts all the time”, Israeli Communications Minister Gilad Erdan said regarding Kerry’s visit to Cairo. Israeli Economics Minister Naftali Bennett said that “all options (were) on the table”, before adding that fighting could continue.
Qatar and Egypt are considered potential mediators but efforts for a truce were complicated when Hamas said that it would reject a “calm for calm” agreement.