Hamas sends delegation to Cairo peace talks but rules out direct participation

Hamas has sent a delegation to Cairo to be briefed on progress in peace talks, but an official from the group said it would not participate directly in the negotiations it had been boycotting for the past 10 days, Report informs referring to The Guardian.

Hamas representatives were expected on Saturday in the Egyptian capital, where negotiators from Israel, the US, Egypt and Qatar have been holding talks on a elusive deal that would involve the release of Israeli hostages, the freeing of Palestinian detainees and a ceasefire.

The delegation was confirmed in a statement by a senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq, but another unnamed Hamas official, quoted by the French press agency AFP, said the Hamas representatives would not take part in the talks.

The current sticking point in the negotiations is the insistence of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, that any peace agreement must allow an Israeli presence along the Egypt-Gaza border, a strip of land known as the Philadelphi corridor, and on a road bisecting the Gaza Strip, the Netzarim corridor.

Hamas has rejected any such presence, saying it contravenes a three-stage peace plan announced by Joe Biden at the end of May, and later endorsed by the UN security council, which ultimately envisages a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Hamas has said it accepts that deal, but has boycotted the current round of talks on the grounds that the proposal has been fundamentally changed, and it has rejected US claims that it has backed away from the agreement.

The White House insists that the peace plan outlined by Biden has been accepted by Israel, but Netanyahu has repeatedly called its terms into question, vowing his government would continue the war until Hamas is completely obliterated.

The prime minister insists that an Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor is essential to prevent arms smuggling to Hamas from Egypt. The government of Abdel Fatah al-Sisi in Cairo, has argued, however, that it has taken rigorous action against the smuggling and the cross-border smuggler tunnels and that an Israeli presence would raise questions about Egyptian sovereignty and territorial integrity.