International mediators are finalizing a new proposal to narrow the gaps between Israel and Hamas, U.S. and regional officials said, even as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists he will not give up control of Gaza’s border with Egypt — a key stumbling point for a cease-fire deal.
Qatar and Egypt have drafted a series of revisions which are being discussed with U.S. officials, according to a senior official from one of the mediating countries and two Israeli officials. David Barnea, director of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad, was in Doha on Monday to discuss the document, the officials said.
The U.S. officials said that they expected to complete the final proposal with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators on Wednesday or Thursday.
All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations because the latest proposals have yet to be finalized. Israeli officials and Hamas leaders have expressed pessimism over the prospects for an agreement, despite rising public fury in Israel over the failure to bring home the remaining hostages held in Gaza.
Even as negotiators have traded ideas to break the deadlock between Israel and Hamas, Mr. Netanyahu gave a fiery speech on Monday, defying critics who have blamed him for not doing enough to reach a deal.
Mr. Netanyahu repeated his longstanding demand that Israel must retain control of the Gazan side of the border with Egypt — known as the Philadelphi Corridor — to prevent Hamas from rearming through cross-border smuggling. The demand is a non-starter for Hamas, which has demanded a complete Israeli withdrawal as a condition for a cease-fire.
“It will determine our entire future,” Mr. Netanyahu told reporters on Monday night as protesters demanding an immediate cease-fire to free the hostages demonstrated outside his Jerusalem home.
Mr. Netanyahu has sent mixed messages over whether he has called solely for Israeli troops to remain on Gaza’s border with Egypt throughout the six-week truce or as a condition for a permanent cease-fire. One of the Israeli officials said Israel understood that it would have to withdraw in the event that the deal moved forward to its second and third phases.
But in his speech on Monday, Mr. Netanyahu framed Israeli forces along the border between Gaza and Egypt as an existential issue that would engage the country “for the foreseeable future.” His office declined to comment on whether he was referring to the initial truce or to the three-stage agreement as a whole.
Shock and fury engulfed Israel this week after soldiers found the bodies of six Israeli hostages, all of whom were recently shot dead by Hamas, according to Israeli officials. Hamas issued contradictory statements in response, but at least one heavily implied that the hostages were executed after their captors understood Israeli troops were nearby.
Many Israelis blamed Mr. Netanyahu for the failure to bring the hostages back alive, accusing him of avoiding a cease-fire deal with Hamas that could have saved them so as to appease his far-right coalition allies. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets in mass protests demanding an agreement with Hamas or participated in an hourslong general strike.
But both actions ultimately fizzled, revealing a country deeply divided over the price it should pay for bringing home the more than 60 living hostages and the bodies of roughly 35 others still in Gaza.
Hamas has been slowly releasing videos from the dead hostages, continuing a practice that Israeli officials have labeled “psychological terrorism.” On Tuesday night, the group released footage of Ori Danino, a 25-year-old man abducted from the site of a music festival in southern Israel where about 350 people were killed during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7.
Rights groups and international law experts say that a hostage video is, by definition, made under duress, and that the statements in it are usually coerced. The circumstances of how the video was filmed were unclear, and the footage appears to have been edited. It is not clear when the video was filmed.
For months, mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have sought to broker an agreement between Hamas and Israel to end the war in Gaza and free the hostages. Two rounds of high-level negotiations last month in Cairo and in Doha ended without a breakthrough.
Both sides have signed off on the deal’s broader strokes but are still wrangling over many key details. The three-stage cease-fire would begin with a six-week truce during which Palestinian prisoners would be swapped for hostages. During that first stage, Israel and Hamas would negotiate an end to the war, the withdrawal of Israeli forces and the release of the remaining hostages.
In late July, Mr. Netanyahu ordered his negotiating team to toughen Israel’s position on key points of contention, including that Israeli troops would remain deployed along the Philadelphi Corridor during the first phase of the deal.
On Monday, President Biden issued a one-word rebuke of Mr. Netanyahu’s unwillingness to yield on the conditions for a cease-fire. Questioned about whether the Israeli prime minister was doing enough to get back the hostages, Mr. Biden said simply, “No.”
Asked about Mr. Biden’s remarks, Mr. Netanyahu cited multiple occasions when Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken had praised Israel’s conduct in the talks. After meeting with Mr. Netanyahu in mid-August, Mr. Blinken sought to place the onus on Hamas for not moving ahead with the deal.
An Arab official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive talks, said that Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor posed the main obstacle to an agreement.
Hamas has repeatedly said that any cease-fire agreement must lead to a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Egypt has also voiced stiff opposition to a long-term Israeli presence along their border with Gaza.
“Without withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor, there will be no agreement,” Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s lead negotiator, told the Pan-Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera this week.
Hamas officials have refused to take part in the recent rounds of talks, arguing that neither Israel nor the United States was serious about reaching an accord acceptable to the militant group. Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official, called any new American proposal an attempt to defuse public anger over the failure to reach an agreement.
“Further negotiations aren’t necessary,” Mr. Hamdan said in a televised interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday night, saying that Mr. Netanyahu needed to be compelled to adhere to a previous cease-fire offer.
“That is the solution — not more negotiating without any horizon,” Mr. Hamdan added.
Israel and Egypt imposed a crushing blockade on the Gaza Strip when Hamas took full control of the territory in 2007 — dealing a heavy blow to the enclave’s economy — in the hopes of weakening the group. Israel levied tight restrictions on the movement of goods and people by land and barricaded Gaza by sea.
Egypt says it has cracked down on the tunnels and the smuggling of weapons from its side. But Hamas has still managed to bring in large quantities of arms from across the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, according to Israeli officials.
As Israeli troops swept along the Philadelphi Corridor in May, they set about destroying Hamas’s extensive network of tunnels in the area, some of which Israel said had been used to facilitate smuggling. Israeli forces also captured the Rafah crossing to Egypt, which officials argued was similarly used to bring in munitions.
Mr. Netanyahu has insisted that any Israeli withdrawal from the area will mean that Israel would face overwhelming pressure not to send its forces back. But Israeli military analysts have said that, in any case, Hamas would most likely struggle to rebuild its capabilities during the initial six-week truce.
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