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Palestinian negotiator: Israelis added 'unacceptable' modifications to Egyptian proposal

August 18, 2014 at 9:17 am

A member of the Palestinian ceasefire delegation to Cairo, Qais Abdul-Karim, told Anadolu news agency on Sunday evening that they had not yet reached any “decisive” results with the talks.

Abdul-Karim attributed the reason for the lack of progress to the Israeli amendments to the Egyptian ceasefire document, which proposed a lasting agreement with 11 points.

Describing the Israeli amendments as unacceptable and bad, he said: “The Israeli occupation concentrated on a previous demand–the demilitarisation [of the Palestinian resistance].”

The Palestinian and Israeli delegations arrived back in Cairo on Sunday. Both delegations met with the Egyptian mediators the same day and are scheduled to meet them again on Monday.

Commenting on their first meeting to discuss the Egyptian proposal, Anadolu quotes Hamas’s senior leader and member of the delegation Musa Abu Marzouk as saying: “Israel rejected the Egyptian paper by introducing amendments to it, returning the negotiations to square one.”

Abu Marzouk continued: “Prime Minister Benjamiabduln Netanyahu is a prisoner to domestic contradictions. He waged ground and air offensives and lost them both.”

He warned that if a ceasefire agreement is not reached within the next 24 hours, “the truce may not be extended for the third time.”