Everyone sat down in Cairo yesterday. Egyptian, Qatari and Turkish mediators, the US president's envoys, and Hamas officials attended some of the meetings. Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and envoy, and Nikolai Mladenov, his envoy to the Board of Peace for Gaza, are due to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today.

That same Netanyahu said on 9 August that Trump's latest Gaza peace plan was „unacceptable”. A week and a bit later, the man who publicly rejected the plan is the next item on the meeting schedule.

The plan asks for something nobody wants to do first

Trump's plan calls for an immediate halt to military operations in Gaza, the disarmament of Hamas and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from the enclave, with reconstruction to be overseen by a new civilian Palestinian administration.

Hamas said it had accepted the plan in order to avoid the war reigniting, but added that implementation would depend on whether Israel first meets its own obligations - withdrawing its forces and halting attacks. In other words: it is agreed, but nobody wants to be the first to do what was agreed.

While the talks go on, the strikes go on

This is the part that tells the whole story. Israeli air strikes have intensified again over the past few days, after thinning out earlier this month.

The Israeli military said on Sunday its aircraft had hit two militants in Khan Younis and Nuseirat. At least five Palestinians were injured in a strike on a tent camp, doctors in Gaza said - one of those injured in Khan Younis later died of his wounds. In a separate strike an apartment in the Nuseirat camp was hit, injuring several people.

According to one Israeli official, Israel is concerned about Washington's demand to stop targeted assassinations of Hamas militants while the group rebuilds its forces. That is the negotiating position in a single sentence: we want a halt, but not now.

A truce that did not stop everything

The October ceasefire halted the major fighting in a war that lasted two years and began with the Hamas attack on Israel on 7 October 2023. But it did not stop all attacks. Since October more than 1,250 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, mostly civilians - how many were militants is unclear, since Hamas does not usually publish figures on its fallen fighters. According to Israeli data, militants killed four Israeli soldiers in the same period.

One thousand two hundred and fifty people - under an arrangement officially called a truce. The Balkans have enough experience of the gap between a signed document and actual peace not to be impressed by another round of meetings. The question is not whether they will meet again. The question is what changes on the ground between two meetings.