7/6/2024–|Last updated: 6/7/202403:31 PM (Mecca time)
Axios quoted American and Israeli officials as saying that a meeting that took place last Sunday between American, Egyptian and Israeli officials failed to make progress on reopening the Rafah crossing after the Israeli side refused to allow any role for the Palestinian Authority in operating the crossing.
According to the website, the meeting in Cairo was the result of a phone call that took place two weeks ago between US President Joe Biden and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi.
During the call, Sisi agreed to Biden’s request to resume the flow of aid trucks to Gaza via Israel, after aid deliveries stopped two weeks ago in protest against Israel’s control of the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing.
An American official said that Biden promised the Egyptian President that if the flow of aid resumes, the United States will work to reopen the Rafah crossing as soon as possible.
But according to the American website, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to let the Palestinian Authority interfere in Gaza in almost every meeting with American officials in recent months.
Netanyahu said early in the start of the aggression on Gaza that he was against any role for the Palestinian Authority in the Gaza Strip, a position that has become a political discussion point and that he will have difficulty retracting from.
During an Israeli security cabinet meeting before the talks in Egypt, Netanyahu said he did not agree to any role for the Palestinian Authority at the Rafah crossing, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.
One of the sources said that Netanyahu’s statements contradict the policy approved in the cabinet a few days ago, which said that Israel would agree to the Rafah crossing being operated by any government entity other than the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas).
According to Axios, the American delegation to the Cairo meeting was headed by Terry Wolf, the senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council at the White House, while the Israeli delegation was headed by the “Israeli government coordinator in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” Druze General Ghassan Olayan and officials from the General Security Agency (Shin Bet). ), while Egypt was represented by officials from the country’s intelligence services and army.
The website said, quoting American officials, that the Palestinian Authority had prepared a list of about 300 Palestinians from Gaza ready to work at the crossing. It also quoted two Israeli officials as saying that Israel said during the meeting that it was ready to examine the Palestinians on the list and allow those who do not belong to Hamas to operate the crossing side by side. With a European Union observer force that was stationed at the crossing before Hamas took control of the Strip in 2007.
Israel said it had no problem with Palestinians affiliated with the Palestine Liberation Movement (Fatah) managing the crossing, but would not agree to them doing so as official representatives of the Palestinian Authority. According to Israeli officials.
An Israeli official added that Israel proposed instead that the temporary solution would be for the Palestinians on the list to take over the management of the crossing “as a local civilian committee,” but Egypt and the Palestinian Authority rejected this idea.
The Egyptians proposed holding a meeting with the Director of Intelligence in the Palestinian Authority, Major General Majid Al-Faraj, to discuss the issue, but the Israelis refused, and said that the government’s directives require that no discussions about Gaza be held with the Palestinian Authority, according to what Axios quoted Israeli officials as saying.
According to an Israeli official, the discussions about the Rafah crossing were very difficult and ended without reaching an agreement, while another American official stated that there were no expectations that a solution would be reached after one meeting and that talks with Egypt and Israel regarding the crossing were still continuing, adding that It is still possible to reach an agreement on this matter in the near future.
