A team of senior Egyptian mediators is in Gaza for talks with Hamas officials about the several hundred militants trapped in tunnels inside Israeli-controlled territory there, sources told The National on Tuesday.
They said the mediators and Hamas were also discussing the second phase of US President Donald Trump's Gaza peace plan, which began with a ceasefire on October 10 and a hostages-for-prisoners swap.
A Hamas source in Beirut confirmed to The National that negotiations to resolve the standoff over the fighters trapped in tunnels in southern Gaza were continuing. The fighters are stuck behind the “yellow line”, to which Israeli forces moved when the ceasefire took effect.
“There is a US mediation led by Trump's envoy Jared Kushner, and there are also contacts on the issue involving Cairo and Ankara,” said the source.
The ceasefire was brokered by the US along with its allies Egypt, Qatar and Turkey.
The Hamas source said that how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government deals with the trapped fighters “will affect the chances of successfully starting negotiations for the second phase of President Trump's plan”.
The second phase entails disarming Hamas, naming a commission of non-partisan Palestinian technocrats to manage Gaza's day-to-day affairs, and the presence of an international force to assure security in the coastal strip.
The Hamas source accused Mr Netanyahu of using pressure by his far-right allies in the government as an excuse to adopt hardline positions on Gaza-related issues, including the trapped fighters.
“Some Zionist voices have called for killing those trapped and not allowing them to leave the tunnels in the southern area of Rafah,” said the source.
The sources who spoke to The National on Tuesday declined to be drawn on whether the negotiations had made any progress, saying only that Egypt was opposed to suggestions that the fighters surrender and be given safe passage out of Gaza to live in exile abroad.
“They agree to give up their weapons but refuse to leave Gaza,” said one of the sources about the position of the trapped fighters. “The Egyptian team is working in Gaza in deep and high-level co-ordination with both the US and Israel.”
The sources said the trapped fighters had been able to communicate with their leaders recently, but would not say how.
They said that while Israel was capable of destroying the tunnels in which the fighters are hiding, it is reluctant to do so out of fear that it would be seen as the party that breached the ceasefire.
Israel, they said, might be looking for a military victory of sorts to bolster Mr Netanyahu's standing at home by forcing the fighters to leave the tunnels and surrender to its military.
Two deadly attacks on Israeli troops in southern Gaza last month are thought to have been carried out by the trapped fighters, whom the sources say include members of groups other than Hamas.
The standoff over the trapped fighters is one of several issues that are preventing the implementation of the second phase of Mr Trump's plan. Foremost among them is the delay in handing over all the remains of Israeli hostages who died while in captivity and the insufficient humanitarian aid that Israel is allowing into Gaza.
The Gaza war began in October 2023 when Israel responded to a Hamas-led attack that killed about 1,200 people with a military campaign that, according to health officials in Gaza, killed nearly 70,000 Palestinians and wounded more than twice that.
The Israeli campaign also laid to waste large swathes of the enclave's built-up areas, displaced most of its estimated two million residents and created a grave humanitarian crisis.
