CAIRO (IPS) - Representatives of rival Palestinian factions Fatah and Hamas met in Cairo this week for talks aimed at national reconciliation and the formation of a unity government. “Egypt hopes this meeting is the real start of a new period ending the state of division which has gone on too long,” Egyptian intelligence chief Omar Suleiman, Egypt’s point-man on Palestinian affairs, was quoted as saying. Read more about Fatah and Hamas on an uphill road to rapprochement 

CAIRO (IPS) - Senior Egyptian officials have indicated that the new demands raised by Israel for ceasefire could affect the peace negotiations between Israel and Hamas being brokered by Egypt. Israel abruptly announced its refusal Wednesday last week to sign on to an Egypt-proposed ceasefire deal with Palestinian resistance factions before the release of captured Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. The proposed agreement — which Egyptian officials had said was imminent — calls for the phased reopening of the Gaza Strip’s borders. Read more about Israel ditches the go-between 

CAIRO (IPS) - Egyptian authorities are continuing to prevent humanitarian aid from crossing the border into the Gaza Strip, according to local sources. “Until now, only about a quarter of all humanitarian aid to arrive in Egypt has made it across the border into Gaza,” Hatem al-Bulk, journalist and political activist, told IPS. “It’s all piling up in al-Arish because the authorities are refusing to let it through the Rafah border crossing.” Al-Arish is located some 40 kilometers west of the border in Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Read more about Border politics slows aid to Gaza 

CAIRO (IPS) - Egyptians seem at best only cautiously optimistic over the appointment of Senator George Mitchell as United States envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell is mandated chiefly with settling the Arab-Israeli dispute. “Mitchell’s prospects for achieving an acceptable settlement are grim,” Ahmed Thabet, political science professor at Cairo University told IPS. “The previous US administration created several facts on the ground which will be very difficult to undo.” Read more about Little hope from new US mediation 

CAIRO (IPS) - Tens of thousands of houses inside the Gaza Strip were destroyed by air strikes and artillery during Israel’s recently concluded military campaign. Areas along Egypt’s border with the hapless enclave, meanwhile, have not been immune from the devastation. “Dozens of homes on the Egyptian side of the border were badly damaged as a result of nearby Israeli air strikes,” Hatem al-Bulk, journalist and political activist, told IPS. “Most people living within two kilometers of the frontier have left for safer locations.” Read more about Egypt bent at the border 

CAIRO (IPS) - Street protests against Israel’s assault on Gaza continue to be held almost daily. The anger has not ended with the ceasefire called. In Cairo, and in many Arab capitals, much of the anger is directed at the Egyptian regime, seen by critics as complicit in the Israeli campaign. After three weeks of punishing assaults from air, land and sea, the Palestinian death toll has soared past 1,200, most of them civilians. Read more about Gaza war divides Arab governments from people 

CAIRO (IPS) - Since the outset of Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, calls have been renewed for an “international force” to protect the civilian population. But Palestinian resistance factions, chief among them Hamas, reject the idea outright. “The resistance will not accept international forces [in the Gaza Strip],” Khaled Meshaal, head of Hamas’s Damascus-based political bureau said recently on Syrian state television. “We know that such forces would only serve Israel and its occupation.” Read more about Resistance rejects international Gaza force 

CAIRO (IPS) - A week after the unveiling of a Franco-Egyptian ceasefire proposal aimed at stopping the bloodshed in the Gaza Strip, Palestinian resistance faction Hamas and on the face of it Israel, are still discussing the fine print of an agreement. “Details of the proposal remain unclear,” Abdelaziz Shadi, coordinator of Cairo University’s Israeli studies program told IPS. “Both sides are still in the process of studying its terms to determine whose interests it serves.” Read more about Ceasefire moves fading away