Hamas delegation in Cairo: More media show for ‘century deal’ than substance | MadaMasr
While ‘a way out’ of the US economic deal was among the delegation’s aims, the refusal of key Hamas political figures to attend makes outcomes of the talks ‘meaningless.’
▻https://www.madamasr.com/en/2018/07/14/feature/politics/hamas-delegation-in-cairo-more-media-show-for-century-deal-than-substance
A Hamas delegation left Cairo on Friday night after spending four days in the Egyptian capital, pushing for a temporary resolution to the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Gaza Strip and a way out of the United States’s “deal of the century” with the “least amount of damage” possible, according to a source close to the Palestinian movement’s Gaza-based leadership.
Despite the seeming stakes of the Cairo agenda, a second high-ranking Hamas source minimized the significance of the talks between Egyptian General Intelligence Director Abbas Kamal and the Gaza delegation that is headed by Saleh Arouri and composed of Hamas political bureau members Moussa Abu Marzouk, Ezzat al-Risheq, Khalil al-Hayya, Hossam Badran, and Rawhi Mushtaha.
The second source, who is close to representatives of the Hamas leadership abroad, tells Mada Masr that Cairo extended an invitation to Hamas senior political leader Ismail Haniyeh and the movement’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar. However, neither accepted the invitation, with Haniya calling the visit “worthless,” according to the source.
For the second Hamas source, the visit’s objectives were twofold: “probing” and “staging a media show to suggest to the Americans that the key to Gaza remains singularly in Hamas’s pocket.”