Egypt’s prime minister lamented this Monday that “internal pressures” within Israel and the Islamist group Hamas are preventing an agreement for a truce in the Gaza Strip, as neither party is willing to make concessions.
“In my analysis, the situation is more complicated due to the internal political configuration of both sides. I’m talking about Israel and Hamas,” said Mustafa Madbuli, during a seminar on Gaza at the special meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF), held in Riyadh.
The head of the Government of Egypt – the country that mediates between Israel and Hamas, together with Qatar and the United States – assured that there is “a lot of internal pressure on both sides not to reach any type of compromise”.
This pressure makes it “really difficult” to reach an agreement on a truce, because “the best and most correct solution, which may be in the public interest, is not sought.”
Regarding the resumption of negotiations encouraged by Egypt, Madbuli assured that “there is progress on certain issues, but there are still fundamental points on which there must be a kind of commitment from both parties to accept (an agreement), so that an agreement can be reached. solution”.
“This is what we are facing,” said the Egyptian head of government.
Today, a Hamas delegation arrived in Cairo to hold “extensive talks” with officials from Egypt’s security agencies on the latest proposal to achieve a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, Egyptian state television Al-Qahera News reported.
On the other hand, Madbuli insisted that “the most important thing is to work to prevent an attack on Rafah”, a city in the extreme south of Gaza that borders Egypt and where around 1.4 million people displaced by the war in the Palestinian enclave are living in this moment.
An Israeli invasion of Rafah would be “catastrophic”, according to the Egyptian prime minister, stressing that such an action could “pressure (the population of Gaza) to cross the border into Egypt”.
“Of course, as a government, we will be ready from a humanitarian point of view to provide any kind of support to the Palestinians. But if we talk about the political effects, this will contribute to the complete liquidation of the Palestinian cause,” warned Madbuli.
“All of this puts us, as an international society, in a situation where we have to do everything possible to prevent the invasion of Rafah and really put pressure on both sides to reach a ceasefire agreement and have at least a period in which negotiations can begin”, he concluded.
