GAZA CITY: A Gaza ceasefire was holding on Wednesday as Egyptian mediators pursued talks with Israeli and Palestinian representatives on an enduring end to a war that has devastated the Hamas-dominated enclave.

Egypt’s intelligence chief met a Palestinian delegation in Cairo, the state news agency MENA said, a day after he conferred with Israeli representatives. The Palestinian team, led by an official from Western-backed President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, includes envoys from Hamas and the Islamic Jihad group.

“The indirect talks between the Palestinians and Israelis are moving forward,” an Egyptian official said, making clear that the opposing sides were not meeting face to face. “It is still too early to talk about outcomes but we are optimistic.”

Israel’s delegation to the talks arrived in Cairo on Wednesday, sources at the airport in the Egyptian capital said.

Egypt’s Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri told reporters his country was working for a deal and sought “solutions to protect the Palestinian people and their interests.”

But a senior official with Hamas’s armed wing said the group might quit the Cairo talks if progress was not made towards meeting its main demands to lift a blockade on Gaza and free Palestinian prisoners.

“Unless the conditions of the resistance are met the negotiating team will withdraw from Cairo and then it will be up to the resistance in the field,” a senior commander of Hamas’s armed wing said.

Israel withdrew ground forces from the Gaza Strip on Tuesday morning and started a 72-hour Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Hamas as a first step towards a long-term deal.

Gaza officials say the war has killed 1,867 Palestinians, most of them civilians.

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2014