By Andrew Mills
SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) -Hamas officials were in Egypt on Monday ahead of talks with Israel that the U.S. hopes will bring a halt to war in Gaza and release of hostages despite contentious issues like disarmament of the Palestinian militant group under Donald Trump’s plan.
Talks were set to begin as the war reaches its two-year mark with the majority of 2.2 million Gazans homeless and hungry in a sea of rubble after Israeli strikes that have killed over 67,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians, Gaza health officials say.
Israelis are still haunted by October 7, 2023 when Hamas-led militants stormed over the border into Israeli communities, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli tallies – the single bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust. Hamas’ attack ignited the war.
Israeli negotiators were due to travel to Egypt’s Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh later in the day for talks focused on freeing hostages, part of the U.S. president’s 20-point blueprint for ending the two-year-old conflict.
A Palestinian official close to the talks was sceptical about prospects of a breakthrough given deep mutual mistrust, saying Hamas and other Palestinian factions worried that Israel might ditch negotiations once it recovered the hostages.
The Israeli delegation includes officials from spy agencies Mossad and Shin Bet, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser Ophir Falk and hostages coordinator Gal Hirsch.
However, Israel’s chief negotiator, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, was only expected to join later this week, pending developments in the negotiations, according to three Israeli officials. Spokespeople for Dermer and the prime minister did not immediately comment.
The Hamas delegation is led by the group’s exiled Gaza leader, Khalil Al-Hayya, whose visit to Egypt was the first since he survived an Israeli airstrike in Doha, the Qatari capital, last month designed to kill top Hamas officials.
Negotiators from Hamas will seek clarity on the mechanism to achieve a swap of remaining hostages – both alive and dead – for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, as well as an Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and a ceasefire, according to a statement put out by the Islamist group late on Sunday.
A thorny issue is likely to be the Israeli demand, echoed in Trump’s plan, that Hamas disarm, something the group insists cannot happen unless Israel ends its occupation and a Palestinian state is created, a Hamas source told Reuters.
Netanyahu, whose country has become internationally isolated over its devastation of Gaza, says a Palestinian state will never transpire, defying Western countries that have newly recognised Palestinian independence.
An official briefed on the negotiations said he expected the round of talks kicking off on Monday would not be quick.
“Negotiations will last at least a few days if not longer. There won’t likely be a quick agreement because the goal is to reach agreement on a comprehensive deal with all details worked out before the ceasefire can begin to be implemented,” he said.
“Hamas and Israel have agreed to the fundamentals of the Trump 20-point plan. The next phase or phases of talks are designed to tackle the specific details, which in the past has been a lengthy process.”
Trump was optimistic. “I am told that the first phase should be completed this week, and I am asking everyone to MOVE FAST,” he said in a social media post.
Trump’s plan is the most advanced effort yet to halt the war, the longest, most destructive and deadliest ever in generations of conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.
The war has caused a humanitarian disaster with many Gaza Palestinians at risk of famine and suffering from a lack of safe shelter and medical care, international aid groups say.
The first phase of the talks deals with the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinians jailed in Israel. There are 48 remaining hostages in Gaza, 20 of whom are alive.
Hamas on Friday approved the hostage release formula and several other elements of Trump’s plan but sidestepped trickier points, including calls for it to disarm and yield power in the Gaza Strip.
Trump nevertheless welcomed Hamas’ response and told Israel to stop bombing Gaza.
WARY HOPE AMONG GAZANS FOR AN ELUSIVE DEAL
Palestinians who have watched numerous efforts to end the war through mediation by Egypt, Qatar and the United States fail are hoping all the same for a quick agreement this time.
“If there is a deal, then we survived, if there isn’t, it is like we have been sentenced to death,” said Gharam Mohammad, 20, who is displaced along with her family in central Gaza.
The area where she lived has been heavily bombed for the past several weeks, and hundreds of houses were demolished.
Domestically, Netanyahu is caught between growing pressure to end the war — from hostage families and a war-weary public — and demands from ultra-nationalist members of his coalition who insist there must be no let-up in efforts to annihilate Hamas.
Far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on X that ceasing the military campaign would be a “grave mistake.” He and Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have threatened to bring down Netanyahu’s government if the war ends.
But opposition leader Yair Lapid of the centrist Yesh Atid party has said political cover will be provided so the Trump initiative can succeed and “we won’t let them (far-right ministers) torpedo the deal”.
(Reporting by Ahmed Fahmy in Sharm el-Sheikh, Nidal al-Mughrabi in Cairo and Andrew Mills in Doha; writing by Michael Georgy; editing by Mark Heinrich)
