Working on revised ceasefire deal, US urges Israel to ‘give talks time to succeed’
Negotiators said to be revising framework, as May 27 outline ‘no longer working’; US ambassador says they’re unsure what Hamas will accept, but goal is to ‘force a decision’.
(THE TIMES OF ISRAEL) The United States is still working with mediators Egypt and Qatar to present a revised proposal for a hostage-ceasefire deal to stop the fighting in Gaza and return Israelis held captive by the Hamas terror group, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Monday.
Miller told reporters Washington was working with the mediators on the contents of the proposal and to ensure that “it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement.”
“I don’t have a timetable for you other than to say that we are working expeditiously to try to develop that proposal,” Miller added.
Months of negotiations have not succeeded in reaching a deal for the return of the 101 hostages still believed to be held captive in Gaza, more than eleven months after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, launching the ongoing war.
Mossad chief David Barnea was in Qatar last week to try to find a way to make progress in the talks, but at present, there are no teams in Doha or Cairo, where past negotiations have been held through intermediaries.
The US has repeatedly expressed cautious optimism in recent months about an imminent deal, but no agreement has materialized.
Amid efforts to revive talks, the US State Department said Monday that Secretary of State Antony Blinken would travel to Egypt Tuesday to discuss progress on the issue with Egyptian officials.
The officials will “discuss ongoing efforts to reach a ceasefire in Gaza that secures the release of all hostages, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and helps establish broader regional security,” Miller said.
On Monday, Channel 12 reported that senior Biden administration officials have told the families of the American hostages that the existing framework for the deal — which the US presented publicly in June and which Israel had said it agreed to — is no longer working.
Accordingly, the US and other mediators are considering other formulas that will coax Israel and Hamas to make a deal, the report said. The deal framework now being discussed would reportedly be shorter than the initial proposal, which would have been enacted over three six-week phases.
Israel’s negotiating team is also working on alternative frameworks, the report stated.
Speaking at the annual Haaretz Security Conference on Monday, US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew acknowledged that the US doesn’t “know what Hamas is willing to accept.”
Israel, the US, and mediating states are trying “to bring together as close as we can one position in the end so we can force a decision by Hamas,” he said.
To that end, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid, on a visit to Washington DC on Monday, urged US Secretary of State Antony Blinken not to let “Hamas skirt a hostage deal.”
The Yesh Atid chair told the American diplomat that Israel “will not be able to recover” if it leaves the 101 remaining hostages in Gaza,” and said, as he has done since early in the war, that his part would provide a political “safety net” to approve a deal, in order to counter far-right coalition parties threatening to bring down the government if one is reached.
An Israeli official, speaking to the Times of Israel said Monday that the US was being cautious, and trying to avoid presenting a proposal that would likely be rejected.
One of the main sticking points in the previous deal, which Israel had agreed to on May 27, was the issue of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor, which runs along the Gaza-Egypt border.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted that Israel maintain a security presence along the route, arguing that withdrawing from the key route would enable Hamas to rearm itself with weapons smuggled into the Palestinian enclave from Egypt. Hamas, however, has said that it will accept nothing less than a full withdrawal.
The prime minister has come under intense pressure, both in Israel and abroad, to soften this position, a demand which only grew after six hostages were executed in a tunnel in Rafah at the end of August.
The murders, which occurred just days before IDF troops found and extracted the bodies, brought hundreds of thousands of Israelis to the streets demanding a deal, saying that it must happen even if it required concessions.
The efforts to create a new offer came as Israeli leaders are advocating shifting the ongoing war’s focus from Gaza to Hezbollah, including potentially through a major ground operation against the Lebanese terror group, which has been attacking Israel on a near-daily basis since October 8, claiming that it is doing so in support of Hamas.
Speaking to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said that “Israel should give [hostage] negotiations a chance to succeed,” rather than forging ahead with all-out war against Hezbollah, and noted “the devastating consequences that escalation would have on the people of Israel, Lebanon, and the broader region.”
The pair spoke following the Iran-backed Houthi ballistic missile attack against Israel in the early hours of Sunday morning, along with the barrage of rocket attacks into northern Israel by Hezbollah over the weekend.
Austin “reinforced the United States’ ironclad commitment to Israel’s security and its right to self-defense,” a US readout of the call stated.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 344.
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