Top Biden administration negotiators were back in the Middle East on Thursday for a last diplomatic drive before the American election, though hopes were not high for quick agreements to pause the fighting.
With Israel battling Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and top American negotiator, met with officials in Cairo on Thursday, including the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. At the same time, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, and his de facto envoy on the conflict with Hezbollah, Amos Hochstein, held talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister.
The goal of all of these visits is to support the Biden administration’s policy of “de-escalation backed by deterrence,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the diplomacy. But progress in cease-fire talks seems unlikely in coming days, with the election looming on Tuesday in the United States.
Officials briefed on Israel’s internal thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, have said that the country’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is waiting to see who will succeed President Biden before committing to a diplomatic trajectory.
In Cairo, Mr. Burns and Mr. el-Sisi discussed “ways to push negotiations forward” toward a cease-fire and the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, a statement from Mr. el-Sisi’s office said. About 100 hostages captured in the Hamas attack in Israel last October remain in Gaza, and Israeli officials believe about two-thirds are still alive.
Earlier in the week, during talks among envoys from Israel, the United States and the two countries that mediate for Hamas, Egypt and Qatar, possible proposals emerged for an initial, temporary cease-fire in Gaza that would lead to the return of a small group of hostages.
Mr. Burns’s discussions in Cairo were expected to focus on refinements to those scaled-down proposals that American officials hope will prod both Israel and Hamas to at least soften their positions and allow bargaining to resume in earnest after months of false starts.
Multiple versions of a potential Gaza proposal are still under discussion. One would release female hostages along with male captives over 50 in return for a set number of Palestinian prisoners, according to a person briefed on the discussions, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. In that version, the fighting in Gaza would pause for some time, but likely less than the six weeks envisioned in a previous deal negotiators had been pushing.
Mr. Gallant’s office said he had discussed with Mr. McGurk and Mr. Hochstein the efforts to free the hostages and the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Officials in Washington are pessimistic that Hamas will take any of the new deals. A senior Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, has already rejected an idea Egypt proposed over the weekend for a 48-hour cease-fire in Gaza, during which Hamas would release four Israeli hostages in exchange for some Palestinians imprisoned in Israel. Mr. Hamdan said on Sunday that Hamas would agree only to a permanent cessation of hostilities.
Some U.S. officials believe that Hamas leaders, like some officials in Israel, see waiting as advantageous. Israel’s longstanding conflict with Hezbollah, which reignited when the Lebanon-based armed group began firing on Israel last October in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, has ballooned from a regular but relatively restrained exchange of fire into an Israeli military ground operation and airstrikes inside Lebanon.
Hezbollah has also continued its attacks targeting Israel. On Thursday, local officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that projectiles fired from Lebanon had struck an agricultural area, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer. The attacks across the Israel-Lebanon border have forced tens of thousands of people on both sides to evacuate their homes.
After Mr. Netanyahu’s meeting with the U.S. officials, his office released a statement focused on the conflict with Hezbollah, emphasizing Israel’s need to “thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon, in a way that will return our residents safely to their homes.” The statement did not mention Gaza.
On Wednesday, a draft cease-fire proposal to address the fighting with Hezbollah was published by Israeli news media, prompting a National Security Council spokesman, Sean Savett, to warn that such reports should be viewed with skepticism.
“There are many reports and drafts circulating,” he said in a statement. “They do not reflect the current state of negotiations.”
Nor did the published draft appear likely to gain traction. Kassem Kassir, a Lebanese expert on Hezbollah who is close to the group, noted that the document appears to call for Hezbollah’s withdrawal from Lebanon’s border area with Israel and for the Lebanese authorities to prevent the group from rearming.
“It’s too early to discuss these points, and I think it won’t be accepted by Hezbollah,” he said.
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