By Ronen Bergman, Adam Rasgon, Aaron Boxerman and Julian E. Barnes
International mediators are finalizing a new cease-fire 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 the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt — a key stumbling point for a deal.
Qatar and Egypt have drafted a series of revisions that 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, Qatar, on Monday to discuss the document, the officials said.
The U.S. officials said that they expected to complete what they term a “final” proposal with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators Wednesday or Thursday. But a senior U.S. official acknowledged that previous plans have also been called final, and then revised.
In interviews, U.S. officials described two major sticking points that for months have delayed a deal to end the fighting in the Gaza Strip and to release hostages kidnapped by Hamas and Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
One remaining stumbling block is how many people each side would set free and who they would be. On that question, Hamas has never come to an agreement, U.S. officials said.
The other outstanding dispute hinges on whether and how quickly Israel would withdraw its troops from the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip of Gaza along the Egyptian border. Israel initially agreed to a phased withdrawal plan, officials say, only to see Netanyahu upend that deal last week.
All of the officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive negotiations over proposals that have yet to be finalized. Israeli officials and Hamas leaders have expressed pessimism about 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, Netanyahu gave a fiery speech Monday, defying critics who have blamed him for not doing enough to reach a deal. He was similarly adamant Wednesday in a news conference for English-language news outlets.
Netanyahu repeated his long-standing demand that Israel must retain control of the Philadelphi corridor, to prevent Hamas from rearming through cross-border smuggling. “People said, ‘If you stay, this will kill the deal.’ And I say, ‘Such a deal will kill us,’” he said Wednesday.
Hamas has insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, and Egypt has objected strenuously to an Israeli military presence in the corridor. “Without withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor, there will be no agreement,” Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ lead negotiator, told the Pan-Arab broadcaster Al Jazeera this week.
Netanyahu has sent mixed messages over whether he has called for Israeli troops to remain on Gaza’s border with Egypt solely during the six-week first phase of a truce or as part of a permanent cease-fire.
He told reporters Wednesday that the corridor must be controlled by an outside force, over the long haul, to prevent weapons smuggling. He said that could be someone other than the Israeli military — in theory, at least — but that in reality, he doubted anyone else would do the job.
“Bring anyone who will actually show us — not on paper, not in words, not in a slide, but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month — that they can actually prevent the recurrence of what happened there before,” Netanyahu said. “We’re open to considering it. But I don’t see that happening right now. And until that happens, we’re there.”
Another Israeli official and multiple U.S. officials painted a somewhat different picture of Israel’s stance, saying the government understood that it would have to withdraw in the event that the deal moved forward to its second and third phases.
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 by its military wing in Gaza strongly implied that the hostages were executed after their captors understood Israeli troops were nearby.
Many Israelis blamed Netanyahu for the failure to bring the hostages back alive, accusing him of prolonging the war to appease his far-right coalition allies rather than striking a deal to free the captives. 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.
For months, mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have sought to broker a truce between Hamas and Israel. 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. It would begin with a six-week cease-fire, during which Palestinian prisoners would be swapped for some of the 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, Netanyahu ordered his negotiating team to toughen Israel’s position on key points of contention, including the Philadelphi corridor. An Arab official said that Netanyahu’s insistence on maintaining Israeli control of the corridor posed the main obstacle to an agreement.
On Monday, President Joe Biden issued a one-word rebuke of 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, Biden said simply, “No.”
Asked about Biden’s remarks, Netanyahu cited multiple occasions when Secretary of State Antony Blinken had praised Israel’s conduct in the talks. After meeting with Netanyahu in mid-August, Blinken sought to place the onus on Hamas for not moving ahead with the deal.
But several U.S. officials said they believed Netanyahu was being disingenuous, seeking to run out the clock until the U.S. election. If former President Donald Trump is elected, Netanyahu would be unlikely to come under much pressure from Washington to make concessions, they speculated.
Hamas officials have refused to take a direct 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. But they have continued to communicate with Qatari and Egyptian mediators.
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,” Hamdan said in a televised interview with Al Jazeera on Tuesday night, saying that Netanyahu needed to be compelled to adhere to a previous cease-fire offer.
“That is the solution — not more negotiating without any horizon,” 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 cross-border tunnels and the smuggling of weapons from its side. But Hamas has still managed to bring in large quantities of arms from Egypt, according to Israeli officials.
As Israeli troops swept along the Philadelphi corridor in May, they set about destroying Hamas’ tunnel network there. Israeli forces also captured the Rafah crossing to Egypt, which officials argued was similarly used to bring in munitions.
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