US officials join direct talks with Hamas in Cairo—’CNN’

Top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk, have rejected key parts of Trump’s plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.

By JNS

Senior U.S. officials joined direct talks with Hamas in Cairo this week for the first time since the Oct. 10, 2025, ceasefire deal with the Palestinian terrorist organization, CNN reported on Wednesday.

A delegation led by senior Trump administration official Aryeh Lightstone met with leading Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya on Tuesday night, two Hamas sources told the broadcaster.

Lightstone was joined by Nickolay Mladenov, the high representative for the Gaza Strip for U.S. President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace, according to the report.

Al-Hayya pressed Lightstone regarding the need for Jerusalem to fully implement its commitments to the first phase of U.S.-brokered truce, including an end to airstrikes and the entry of more aid into Gaza, before moving to the deal’s next phase, the sources told CNN.

The current truce went into effect in the Gaza Strip on Oct. 10, 2025, ending the two-year war that began when Hamas, other Palestinian terrorist groups and Gazan “civilians” invaded the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023. The terms of the first phase leave the IDF in control of approximately half of Gaza.

The IDF said this week it killed a Hamas communications-unit commander and two production-unit commanders in Gaza City in airstrikes targeting terrorists involved in plotting attacks on Israeli forces and rebuilding the group’s military capabilities.

Tuesday’s meeting in Cairo came days after Lightstone met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a bid to secure Israel’s commitment to fully implement the first phase of the ceasefire, per a U.S. source and a diplomat familiar with the talks.

One source said Netanyahu agreed to implement all those requirements if Hamas committed to disarmament.

Top Hamas leaders, including Khaled Mashaal and Musa Abu Marzouk, have rejected key parts of Trump’s plan in recent months, including disarmament, despite having agreed to the proposal in October.

Hamas’s representatives arrived in Egypt on Saturday to demand that the Israel Defense Forces withdraw from Gaza, fully reopen the Strip’s borders, increase the number of crossings and allow greater volumes of aid to enter the enclave, a terrorist official told AFP over the weekend.

The Hamas delegation was also expected to meet with representatives of other Palestinian terrorist organizations to discuss those issues, a second Hamas official said.

A senior Hamas source told CNN on Wednesday that the terrorists view Mladenov’s proposal for disarmament as reflecting “a major imbalance in the ordering of priorities.”

The source claimed Mladenov has taken to relaying Jerusalem’s demands and warning that the IDF will return to war if Hamas does not agree to lay down arms.

“It even reached the point where Mladenov conveyed veiled threats: Accept the paper or face a return to war,” the source stated.

Under the second phase of Trump’s 20-point peace plan, Gaza is to be de-radicalized and demilitarized, with the deployment of an International Stabilization Force to parts of the Strip currently held by the Israeli military.