Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has called on Hamas to promptly agree to a deal with Israel to "save the Gaza Strip from Israel's military offensive."
"We call on the Hamas movement to quickly complete a prisoner deal, to spare our Palestinian people from the calamity of another catastrophic event with dire consequences, no less dangerous than the Nakba of 1948," Abbas says in a statement carried by the official Palestinian outlet Wafa. Abbas expressed hope that an agreement with Israel would save Rafah from an Israeli invasion.
A Hamas source tells AFP that a delegation is headed to Cairo to meet Egyptian and Qatari mediators after Israeli negotiators held talks with the mediators on Tuesday.
The Israeli delegation called Hamas' conditions "unrealistic." The Wall Street Journal reports, citing U.S. officials, that the summit of intelligence chiefs, attended by the Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea, ended without any results.
CIA director William Burns, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, and director of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate Abbas Kamel took part in the meeting. According to sources, no agreement was reached on any main points, including the duration of the ceasefire or the ratio of released Hamas hostages to Palestinian prisoners.
