CIA head says Hamas’s Sinwar under growing pressure to end war – report
Burns reportedly says Gaza chief worried by increasing resentment over suffering caused by conflict, while senior commanders in group are weary of fighting
CIA director Bill Burns told a closed-door conference over the weekend that the agency assesses Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is under increasing pressure from the terror group’s commanders to accept a hostage-ceasefire deal, CNN reported Tuesday.
The report was based on the account of an individual who was present at the discussion at the annual Allen & Company summer retreat in Sun Valley on Saturday.
Burns told the gathering that Sinwar is not “concerned with his mortality” but is bothered by growing resentment among Palestinians at the suffering caused by the war that began with the devastating October 7 attack on Israel, according to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Senior Hamas commanders are weary of the war, now in its tenth month, and are pressuring Sinwar to agree to an Israel proposal that was promoted by US President Joe Biden at the end of May. Talks on the proposal are ongoing, with officials voicing either optimism that a deal could be reached or concern that the moment is slipping away.
At the conference, Burns said that Israeli and Hamas leaders must seize the opportunity to reach an agreement, the source said.
The CIA declined to comment, CNN said.
US intelligence believes that Sinwar is hiding in tunnels under the city of Khan Younis in the Gaza Strip, according to the report.
A US official told CNN that Sinwar is no longer interested in ruling Gaza and that both Israel and Hamas have accepted the idea of an “interim governance” in which control of the Palestinian enclave would be handed over to a third party. Previous reports have said that leadership would be composed of Palestinians unaffiliated with Hamas who are trained by the US.
Burns is playing a key role in the ongoing efforts to reach a hostage-ceasefire deal via US, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators.
The reported remarks align with recent media reports that US intelligence has assessed Hamas is seriously weakened by Israel’s military offensive, which came in response to the October 7 attack and aims to destroy the terror group, topple its Gaza regime, and free hostages who were abducted in the assault.
However, reports in recent days have also said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is hardening Israel’s demands in negotiations.
The terror group, for its part, has reportedly indicated it is still willing to negotiate despite an Israeli strike on Saturday that targeted Hamas military chief Muhammad Deif. Israel has not officially confirmed that the bombing killed the elusive Deif.
War erupted on October 7 when Hamas led a devastating cross-border attack on Israel in which terrorists killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 as hostages to Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 38,000 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 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
