Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that he spoke to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, whose country has been trying to arrange a Gaza ceasefire, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York. Netanyahu's talks with Sisi late on Wednesday focused on "regional developments", the Israeli Prime Minister wrote on Twitter without elaborating. Egypt has been working to broker a long-term ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip's dominant Hamas Islamist movement amid frequent violence along the Israel-Gaza border, where Palestinians have been holding weekly protests. Palestinians are boycotting Washington's peace efforts after Trump broke with long-standing US policy by recognising Jerusalem as Israel's capital and moved the American Embassy to the contested city. Palestinian leaders say that a state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, must be based on the pre-1967 war borders and see any future Israeli military presence as a violation of sovereignty.

Source: dna September 27, 2018 07:52 UTC