The United States plans to give Hamas and Israel a new proposal to close the gaps in the last remaining 10% of Phase 1 of the May 31 deal, as Jerusalem remains pessimistic that progress is possible.
“We are not optimistic at all,” a source told The Jerusalem Post.
In a rare public appearance in London, CIA Director William Burns underscored on Saturday that 90% of the text needed for Phase 1 of the three-phase first introduced by President Joe Biden has been completed but that the last 10% has been very difficult to finalize.
The US, he said, plans to put forward new language this week in an attempt to close those gaps.
“We’re working very hard with the Egyptians and the Qataris, the two mediators right now, to try to refine that [Phase 1] framework, add more details to it, and put it in a form... that both leaderships will see the value of moving ahead,” he said at an event sponsored by The Financial Times.
“I cannot sit here today with all of you and say that we’re going to succeed,” said Burns, who has been the lead negotiator for the United States and has led all the high-level summits. He has worked alongside the main mediators, Qatar and Egypt, to help secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages, of which an estimated 66 are still alive.
The first of two sticking points has been the details relating to the exchange of Gaza hostages for Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists held in Israeli jails. It’s expected that in Phase 1 of the deal, which would last six weeks, some 18-32 hostages would be swapped for some 800 Palestinian prisoners, including some with blood on their hands.
The other sticking point has been the Philadelphi Corridor, a critical buffer zone between Egypt and Gaza. Israel has refused to cede to a Hamas demand that the IDF withdraw from that corridor in Phase 1 of the deal.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under fire from his critics and the security establishment for refusing to temporarily withdraw from the corridor.
US negotiators' criticism of Hamas rising
US negotiators have been more vocal regarding their criticism of Hamas, particularly in the aftermath of the terror group’s execution of six hostages over a week ago, some four of whom were likely to have been freed in Phase 1.
This included 23-year-old Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin. Hamas in the aftermath of that execution stiffened its demands relating to the hostage-prisoner swap, a high-level US official told reporters last week.
Burns said that Hamas should want to make a deal, particularly since it would improve humanitarian conditions for Palestinians on the ground in Gaza.
The lead negotiator said that the Egyptians, the Qataris, and “anyone with any influence over Hamas has to push hard” to agree to a deal. “They should not want to be the obstacle in the path of… the possibility of genuinely improving what are horrific conditions in Gaza,” he stressed.
“I cannot tell you how close we are right now. It is a fact that if you look at the written text [of Phase 1], 90% of the paragraphs have been agreed to. But in any negotiation, I’ve been involved in, the last 10% is the last 10% for a reason because it’s the hardest part to do,” Burns stated.
He promised that the US and the mediators planned to continue to work on finalizing Phase 1 of the deal.
“We will continue to work as hard as we can with the other mediators on this because there’s no good alternative to getting to that ceasefire and the release of hostages,” he said.
“There’s a lot at stake” especially “for the hostages who are still alive, who are living in hellish conditions and tunnels beneath Gaza,” Burns explained.
“We have to all remember that despite all of that work that needs to be done, this is ultimately a question of political will,” he said as he called on both Israeli and Hamas leaders “to make some hard choices and difficult compromises.”
Burns also called for a day-after plan for Gaza, explaining that while Hamas’s “military capabilities over the last 11 months have been severely degraded, the group also represented an idea and a movement that was difficult to eliminate.
“In my experience, the only way you kill an idea is with a better idea,” Burns said as he pushed the two-state resolution to the conflict as the best way to move the situation forward once there was a Gaza ceasefire.
Head of the UK Secretary Intelligence Service Richard Moore said that such a Gaza ceasefire deal would allow for a diplomatic solution along Israel’s northern border. The IDF and Hezbollah have engaged in a cross-border war since October 8.
“If you could get the ceasefire in Gaza, you have a chance to reverse momentum; you have a chance to open up the potential for a deal over the Blue Line between Israel and Lebanon. You have a chance to address the disruption to international shipping in the Red Sea,” Moore said.
He added that, at present, there still remains the risk of an Iranian retaliatory attack against Israel in the aftermath of the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran over the summer.
Israel has not claimed responsibility for that attack but is widely presumed to have killed Haniyeh.
“I suspect they will try [to attack] and we won’t be able to let our guard down,” Moore said. “The Iranians have a whole destabilizing playbook around the region.”