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Egypt Seeks Int’l Support for Palestinian-Israeli Talks

Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel meeting with a Hamas delegation in Gaza last Sunday (AP)
Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel meeting with a Hamas delegation in Gaza last Sunday (AP)
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Egypt Seeks Int’l Support for Palestinian-Israeli Talks

Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel meeting with a Hamas delegation in Gaza last Sunday (AP)
Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel meeting with a Hamas delegation in Gaza last Sunday (AP)

Egypt is increasing its efforts to launch serious and urgent negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis and started to mobilize international support for the talks through consultations with the foreign ministers of Jordan, Canada, and Malaysia.

The latest consultations addressed the possible resumption of the negotiations based on the two-state solution, including the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital.

Egypt, which is seeking to ensure a permanent ceasefire in Palestine, has sent prominent officials, chaired by the head of the General Intelligence, Abbas Kamel, to Ramallah, Gaza, and Tel Aviv.

Kamel also discussed a prisoner exchange deal and advancing the Palestinian national reconciliation.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry discussed with his Jordanian counterpart Ayman Safadi maintaining the Egyptian-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The two ministers also addressed the reconstruction process in the enclave and affirmed the importance of continuing their efforts to support the national Palestinian authority and improve the living conditions of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza in cooperation with international partners.

Talks also covered efforts to relaunch serious negotiations to achieve a just peace on the basis of the two-state solution in accordance with international law and the Arab Peace Initiative.

Earlier, Shoukry received his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, who called for urgently launching serious and constructive negotiations between the Palestinians and Israelis.

Egypt's foreign ministry spokesman, Ambassador Ahmed Hafez, said Shoukry stressed the need to consolidate the ceasefire by stopping all practices that lead to tension and an escalation of confrontations.

Shoukry also received a phone call from his Canadian counterpart, Marc Garneau, who was briefed on the Egyptian stance, mainly in Palestine.

The Egyptian official emphasized the need to move urgently to launch serious negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, "especially since the recent weeks have undoubtedly proven that the Palestinian cause can no longer be ignored and left unresolved.”

Later, Shoukry held a video conference with his Malaysian counterpart, Hishamuddin Hussain, to exchange views on ways to strengthen cooperation relations between the two countries.

The meeting also touched on developments in Palestine and efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East.

Shoukry referred to Egypt’s moves to stop the escalation and achieve the desired calm in the Gaza Strip, as well as the current efforts to build on the ceasefire.

He also addressed the efforts made to urgently re-launch negotiations, leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state according to the 1967 border, with East Jerusalem as its capital.

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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
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In Besieged Sudan’s El-Fasher, Neighbors Improvise First Aid for Wounded

FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)
FILE - A Sudanese evacuee carries her son as they leave the USNS Brunswick at Jeddah Port, Saudi Arabia, May 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Amr Nabil, File)

For a week, eight-year-old Mohamed has suffered the pain of shrapnel stuck in his arm. But he is one of the lucky ones in Sudan’s western city El-Fasher, which is under paramilitary attack.
“One of our neighbors used to be a nurse. She helped us stop the bleeding,” Mohamed’s father, Issa Said, 27, told AFP via satellite connection under a total communications blackout.
Like an estimated one million more people trapped in the city under a year-long siege by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), Said cannot get to a hospital for emergency care.
With only the most meagre supplies remaining in El-Fasher, his family is among those whose only medical help has come from neighbors and family members who improvise.

In its quest to seize the North Darfur state capital — the only major Darfur city it has not conquered during two years of war with Sudan’s army — the RSF has launched attack after attack, which have been repelled by army and allied forces.

Even if people were to brave the streets, the Saudi Hospital is the only partially functioning one now, according to a medical source there, and even that has come under repeated attack.
Mohamed, an aid coordinator who fled to El-Fasher after getting shot in the thigh during an RSF attack days ago on the nearby famine-hit Zamzam displacement camp, estimates hundreds of injured civilians are trapped in the city.
According to aid sources, hundreds of thousands have fled Zamzam for the city, which is already on the brink of mass starvation according to a UN-backed assessment.
Yet the people of El-Fasher have “opened their homes to the wounded,” Mohamed told AFP, requesting to be identified by his first name for safety.
“If you have the money, you send someone to buy clean gauze or painkillers if they can find any, but you have to make do with what you have,” said Mohamed, whose leg wound meant he had to be carried the 15 kilometers from Zamzam to the city, a journey that took hours.

In crowded living rooms and kitchens, civilians with barely any medical training cobble together emergency first aid, using household items and local medicinal plants to treat burns, gunshot wounds and shrapnel injuries.
Another victim, Mohamed Abakar, 29, said he was fetching water for his family when a bullet pierced his leg.
The limb immediately broke underneath him, and a neighbor dragged him into his home, fashioning him a splint out of a few pieces of wood and cloth.
“Even if it heals my broken leg, the bullet is still inside,” Abakar told AFP, also by satellite link.

By Monday, the RSF’s recent attacks on El-Fasher and surrounding displacement camps had killed more than 400 people, according to the UN.
At least 825,000 children are trapped in “hell on Earth” in the city and its environs, the UN children’s agency UNICEF has warned.
The people of El-Fasher have suffered a year of RSF siege in a city the Sudanese military has also bombed from the air.
Residents have taken to hiding from the shelling in makeshift bunkers, which are often just hastily dug holes topped with bags of sand.

But not everyone makes it in time.

On Wednesday, a shell broke through Hanaa Hamad’s home, shrapnel tearing apart her husband’s abdomen before they could scramble to safety.
“A neighbor and I treated him as best we could. We disinfected the wound with table salt and we managed to stop the bleeding,” the 34-year-old mother of four told AFP.

But by morning, he had succumbed to his injuries, too severe for his wife and neighbor to handle.