Egyptian foreign minister: Hamas could have saved dozens of lives if it had accepted ceasefire

‎“Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri ‎said yesterday evening [July 17, 2014] that ‎Hamas could have saved the lives of ‎dozens of Gaza residents had it accepted ‎the ceasefire that Egypt had proposed and ‎Israel agreed to. During a meal to break ‎the [Ramadan] fast he gave to the editors ‎in chief of [several] newspapers and the ‎Asharq Al-Awsat news agency at the ‎‎[Egyptian] Foreign Ministry, Shukri said: ‘If ‎Hamas had accepted the Egyptian ‎initiative, the lives of at least 40 ‎Palestinians would have been saved,’ the ‎Asharq Al-Awsat news agency quoted him ‎as saying. The foreign minister accused ‎the ‘Hamas-Qatar-Turkey axis’ of ‎attempting to torpedo the role being played ‎by Egypt, which has been acting as a ‎defensive battery against the plan to ‎fragment the region into small, warring ‎states, citing as proof the events in Libya, ‎Iraq, Syria and Sudan.”‎