Israel prepares to send delegation to Cairo for last-chance Gaza cease-fire talks

Israel is ready to send a delegation to Cairo in the coming days to discuss a halt in fighting in the Gaza Strip, Israeli and Egyptian officials said Tuesday, as Arab mediators push militant group Hamas to accept cease-fire terms before an impending military operation in Rafah.

David Barnea, the head of the Mossad intelligence agency, is considering a trip to the Egyptian capital this week after Arab mediators presented to Hamas over the weekend a deal to free hostages held by the group in return for a fighting pause, Egyptian officials said. An Israeli official said Tuesday that Israel could send a delegation depending on developments in the negotiations, WSJ reports.

Israel has said the proposal is the last chance to delay a planned offensive on the southern Gazan city of Rafah that its officials hope would destroy the U.S.-designated terrorist group’s remaining military units there. An Israeli official said that preparations for a Rafah offensive are continuing.

White House officials stressed on Tuesday that Hamas should accept the proposal, and said that the U.S. is working hard to get the parties to reach a deal.

“This is a really good proposal, and Hamas ought to jump at it, and time is of the essence,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is traveling in the Middle East this week, said Monday that the U.S. couldn’t support a major military operation in Rafah without a plan to protect civilians, which he said Israel hadn’t yet provided.

Kirby reiterated that the U.S. wants Israel to hold off. “We don’t want to see a major ground operation in Rafah, certainly we don’t want to see operations that haven’t factored the safety and security into the 1.5 million folks who have tried to seek refuge down there,” he said Tuesday.

Kirby said the U.S. was being pragmatic about the negotiations. “We’re not going to give up…about getting these hostages home, about getting this cease-fire in place,” he said.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday that Israel would evacuate the civilian population in Rafah and move to destroy Hamas’s battalions there “with or without a deal,” echoing comments he has made in recent weeks. “The idea that we would stop the war before achieving all of its goals is out of the question,” he told the families of hostages held in Gaza.

Netanyahu faces pressure from far-right partners in his governing coalition not to ease up on Hamas. National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir released a video on Tuesday saying that Netanyahu “understands very well” the consequences of stopping the war before a Rafah invasion or accepting what he called an irresponsible deal with Hamas. It was an apparent threat to exit from the coalition and collapse the government. Israel’s war cabinet canceled a meeting planned for Tuesday without saying why.

Whether the two warring sides in Gaza can come to an agreement is unclear: Hamas wants the cease-fire to include a pathway to a permanent end to the fighting, an aim at odds with Israel’s ultimate goal of taking out the group’s military capabilities.

Blinken, who is in the region to discuss a broader postwar plan that could help move the cease-fire talks forward, met with Jordanian officials in Amman on Tuesday and then traveled to Israel. As part of that plan, the U.S. hopes to establish diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, lay the groundwork for an Arab force to stabilize Gaza and define a road map leading to the creation of a Palestinian state.

A civilian evacuation from Rafah to other parts of Gaza would take at least 10 days, according to a senior United Nations official, though should they be transferred across the border into Egypt it could happen faster. Egypt refuses to take in Palestinians, citing threats to security and concerns it would undermine a future Palestinian state. U.N. agencies and international NGOs wouldn’t assist in the process because they consider it a form of forced displacement.

A wave of protests over the war on U.S. college campuses has heaped pressure on President Biden from progressives to do more to end the conflict, and a wider agreement would be a huge win for the U.S. leader as he heads into re-election season against former President Donald Trump.  

In the latest cease-fire proposal, Israel has lowered the number of hostages it would require to be released as a first step and showed a willingness to enter a period of calm, a nod to the key Hamas demand of a pathway to a permanent cease-fire.

The proposal, which Israel helped draft but has yet to agree to, envisages two stages: The first would involve the release of at least 20 hostages over three weeks for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners, Egyptian officials said. The length of the first phase could then be extended at a rate of one day for another hostage.

The second phase would include a 10-week cease-fire during which Hamas and Israel would agree on a larger hostage release and an extended pause in fighting that could last up to a year.

While Hamas’s political wing initially responded positively, the group later complained that the terms lack any explicit reference to ending the war, Egyptian officials familiar with the talks said. Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza who is close to the group’s armed wing, is widely considered to be the main decision maker in talks.

Hamas delegates who were in Cairo said they would consult with the military wing and other factions in Gaza and revert to mediators. But, they said, the proposal currently doesn’t provide clear guarantees Israel is serious about the second phase of the deal.

Because Arab-brokered talks about a cease-fire deal have yet to yield results, the U.S. is also discussing with Israeli officials how Israel plans to reduce the risk to civilians if its Rafah offensive goes ahead, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials say an Israeli plan to safeguard civilians needs more work and want Israel to show how it would provide shelter, food and medical care for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced by an operation in Rafah.

In response to concerns about the likely humanitarian toll, Israel is now planning to wage an operation in Rafah on a gradual, neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis. Egyptian officials said Israel has shared a plan with them that shows several areas the Israeli military plans to hit where it claims Hamas fighters are hunkering in tunnels.

Palestinian health authorities say that more than 34,000 people—most of them civilians—have been killed in Gaza so far in the war, roughly 1.5% of the total prewar population. Their figures don’t say how many were combatants.

Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 that sparked the war killed roughly 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. The group and other Palestinian factions took more than 240 hostages. Some of those were freed late last year, but roughly 129 remain as captives in the strip. Of those remaining hostages, at least 34 are dead, including three Americans, according to Israel. Israeli and American officials privately estimate the number of dead could be much higher.

Separately, China said on Tuesday that it had hosted reconciliation talks in Beijing between Hamas and Fatah, the two major Palestinian political factions that have been estranged since 2007, when Hamas took control of Gaza after an armed conflict. Mending ties could be an important step toward re-establishing Palestinian control of Gaza after the Israeli military campaign there ends.

The talks in China didn’t produce a breakthrough but the two parties “fully expressed their political will to achieve reconciliation through dialogue and consultation,” said Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry. The two sides agreed to continue dialogue and agreed on ideas for future steps in that process, he said without offering details.