Hamas said Thursday that it will send a delegation to Cairo as soon as possible to keep working on cease-fire talks, in response to Egypt’s latest proposal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been back in the Mideast this week in a renewed push for a cease-fire deal. New estimates from the United Nations show that if the Israel-Hamas war stopped today, it would still take until 2040 to rebuild all the homes that have been destroyed in nearly seven months of Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives. The war has driven around 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million from their homes. The death toll in Gaza is more than 34,500 Palestinians, and the territory’s entire population has been driven into a humanitarian catastrophe.
