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The Times of Israel is liveblogging Wednesday’s events as they happen.
9min ago
‘Intensive’ talks on hostage deal reported in Egypt
The Reuters news agency reports that “intensive” talks are taking place in Egypt over a possible deal for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, citing a source with knowledge of the negotiations.
According to the report, prisoners accused of serious offenses could be included among those released. Israel continues to insist that Hamas complete the release of women, as in a previous truce, and the infirm.
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18min ago
WSJ: Hamas holding secret talks with Fatah about teaming up under PLO
Fatah and Hamas officials wait for a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, February 12, 2019. (AP/Pavel Golovkin)
Fatah and Hamas officials wait for a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, February 12, 2019. (AP/Pavel Golovkin)
Doha-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and former chief Khaled Mashaal are in contact with top Palestinian official Hussein Al-Sheikh from rival Palestinian faction Fatah about an alliance under the umbrella of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Participating in the secret talks, which are seen as a sign of pressure on the beleaguered Hamas terror group, is also Mohammed Dahlan, a former Fatah apparatchik exiled from Gaza who maintains powerful links in the Gulf and Egypt, and former Palestinian Authority prime minister Salam Fayyad, the paper reports, citing Hamas official Husam Badran, also based in Doha.
Dahlan confirmed that he was involved in the talks, the latest in a long line of bids to conciliate Fatah and Hamas. All have been unsuccessful.
“I am no friend of Hamas,” he is quoted saying. “But do you think anybody is going to be able to run to make peace without Hamas?”
Mohammed Dahlan during an interview with The Associated Press in his office in the West Bank city of Ramallah, on January 3, 2011. (AP Photo/Majdi Mohammed, File)
According to the report, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, ordered an end to the talks once he got wind of them. The disagreement underlines divisions between the goals of the Gaza-based group, which describes its raison d’etre as Israel’s destruction, and those of its Qatar-based politburo, who have seemingly shifted stances and are now open to a political solution.
“We don’t fight just because we want to fight. We are not partisans of a zero-sum game,” Badran is quoted telling the paper. “We want the war to end.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has argued that the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority is not suited to run Gaza after the war, given the points of agreement between PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s party and Hamas.
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1hr ago
Hamas leader Haniyeh arrives in Cairo for talks on possible hostage deal
By GIANLUCA PACCHIANI
Hamas announces that its leader Ismail Haniyeh has arrived in Cairo this morning to conduct talks with Egyptian officials on the latest developments in the war in Gaza and on “other files,” according to a statement released by the terror group.
A source close to Hamas told AFP yesterday that the talks will focus on a possible ceasefire in Gaza and a prisoner exchange deal with Israel.
Haniyeh, based in Qatar, arrives in Cairo accompanied by a “high-level” Hamas delegation, and will hold meetings with Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and other officials to discuss “the delivery of humanitarian aid, 
the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip and the return of displaced persons to their towns and villages in the north,” the source added.
Haniyeh’s visit is his second to Egypt since the brutal Hamas attack and the start of the war on October 7, following a trip in early November.
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