As international negotiators discussed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Monday, officials and analysts said there was little expectation that Israel and Hamas would agree to a truce before the American presidential election next Tuesday.
Envoys from Israel, Egypt, the United States and Qatar took part in the cease-fire talks in Doha, the Qatari capital. American mediators were also expected this week to push for a truce between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But a senior Hamas official has already rejected the premise of a 48-hour cease-fire in Gaza — an idea Egypt proposed over the weekend — during which the group would release four Israeli hostages in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned in Israel.
The official, Osama Hamdan, said on Sunday that Hamas would agree only to a permanent cessation of hostilities, dashing hopes that Israel’s recent killing of the group’s leader, Yahya Sinwar, might bring about a swift change in its negotiating position.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday evening that Israel’s chief envoy, David Barnea, the head of the foreign intelligence service, had returned from Doha after meeting with the C.I.A. director, William J. Burns, and the Qatari prime minister and foreign minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani.
The parties discussed a “new and unified framework” for a cease-fire and planned “in the coming days” to discuss the feasibility of further talks to advance a deal, Mr. Netanyahu’s office said.
Mr. Burns also left Doha and was expected to travel to Cairo later this week for further negotiations, according to a person briefed on the matter.
According to four officials briefed on Israel’s internal thinking, Mr. Netanyahu is waiting to see who will succeed President Biden before committing to a diplomatic trajectory. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Mr. Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he can agree only to a temporary cease-fire that would allow Israeli forces to resume fighting in Gaza. His coalition depends on several far-right lawmakers and ministers who have threatened to bring down the government if it allows Hamas to remain in power.
While Mr. Netanyahu could still compromise, he is most likely waiting to see whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald J. Trump will lead the United States for the next four years. That will help him assess how much leeway he will have from America, Israel’s main benefactor and ally, officials and analysts said.
“The perception is that Trump will do more for Netanyahu,” said Nadav Shtrauchler, a political analyst and former strategist for Mr. Netanyahu. “So I don’t see Netanyahu making major moves when in a week he will know more about where the U.S. is going.”
As president, Mr. Trump moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, legitimized Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and recognized Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, a territory that Israel captured from Syria during the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.
If re-elected, some analysts said, Mr. Trump would be likelier than Ms. Harris to accept long-term Israeli control of parts of Gaza, as well as bigger Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Iran.
While Mr. Trump is unpredictable, he would probably “lean in favor of Israel leading more military strikes inside Tehran,” said Ellie Geranmayeh, a Middle East expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, a research group based in Berlin.
“This would further corner Iran and embolden Bibi, making it much harder to calm the Gaza and Lebanon wars,” she said, using a nickname for Mr. Netanyahu.
If Ms. Harris is elected, the United States is unlikely to reduce its longstanding financial and military support for Israel. But she would probably continue Mr. Biden’s efforts to urge Israel to agree to cease-fires in Gaza and Lebanon and to keep the conflict with Iran from becoming a full-blown war, Ms. Geranmayeh said.
“Harris is likely to pursue continuity, pushing for de-escalation deals across the region aimed at cooling tensions and refocusing U.S. resources elsewhere,” she said.
On Monday, with no cease-fire agreements at hand, the Israeli military said that it was conducting new raids in central and southern Gaza and that it had carried out airstrikes in the ancient city of Tyre in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli military also said that its forces had withdrawn from Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last functioning hospitals in northern Gaza, after a three-day raid during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all the medical workers at the complex were detained and two children died.
An Israeli military official said that troops had detained nearly 100 people suspected of being militants. The military did not comment on the report that children had died. Gaza’s health ministry said that only one pediatrician remained at the hospital.
The raid was part of a renewed Israeli offensive in northern Gaza that was aimed at preventing Hamas from regrouping and that has displaced about 60,000 people. It has also led to widespread hunger and severe deprivation, according to the United Nations.
The renewed offensive has made it impossible to administer the final dose of the polio vaccine to children who had received a first dose in northern Gaza, according to Juliette Touma, a spokeswoman for UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinians. As many as 120,000 children have been left vulnerable to the disease, she said.
In Tyre, the Israeli military said it had struck Hezbollah weapons depots, observation posts and other infrastructure. Hezbollah militants began firing rockets into Israel a year ago, one day after their allies in Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
Israel said it had warned civilians to leave before launching the strikes in the Lebanon. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
Video showed explosions and smoke rising above the city, famed for its Roman ruins, where few people were on the streets and most shops were closed.
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