Hamas representatives were heading to Cairo on Saturday to meet with mediators before a new round of Gaza cease-fire talks as the United States, Qatar and Egypt push to reach an agreement they hope can stave off the growing threat of regional war.
The fighting in Gaza has raged on even as efforts for a deal intensify, with Israeli strikes overnight killing dozens, according to the Gazan health authorities. On Saturday, the Israeli military announced that four soldiers had been killed in fighting Friday in central Gaza.
While U.S. officials have insisted there is progress in negotiations, the main warring parties, Israel and Hamas, have been far more pessimistic. In late July, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, stiffened Israel’s position on several critical issues, including by demanding a postwar Israeli presence along Gaza’s border with Egypt.
Senior officials involved in the negotiations began arriving in Egypt on Saturday, where mediators have been pushing for a summit as early as Sunday to press ahead with the talks.
David Barnea, the chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, as well as the prime minister of Qatar, one of the main mediators, were expected to attend, said an Israeli official and another official familiar with the matter, both of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations. William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director who has served as America’s top negotiator, will also attend, according to a U.S. official.
Hamas said in a statement that its delegation would reach Cairo on Saturday evening to “hear the results” of a recent round of discussions between Israel, Egypt and the United States. It said it was willing to move ahead with a proposal from early July, before Mr. Netanyahu set out his new conditions.
Hamas did not specifically say whether it would participate; its officials did not join a similar round of discussions in Qatar earlier this month, calling it pointless given the new Israeli demands. But the timing of its visit to Cairo leaves the door open for further negotiations.
The United States, Egypt and Qatar are eager to reach a deal they hope can tamp down tensions that have flared across the Middle East since the assassination last month of Hamas’s political leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, hours after an Israeli airstrike killed a senior Hezbollah commander in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was set to visit the region for the next few days, with stops in Egypt, Jordan and Israel, the U.S. military said in a statement. General Brown will focus on “deterring further escalation of hostilities” alongside American support for Israel’s right to self-defense, the military said.
One of the main disputes in the cease-fire talks is over Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence that Israeli forces maintain some presence along the Philadelphi Corridor, a section of the border between Egypt and Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu said that without Israeli oversight, Hamas would quickly use the area to smuggle weapons and rearm itself.