Arab diplomat: Repeated Israeli refusal to dispatch negotiating team has harmed hostage talks

Israel’s repeated refusal to send a negotiating team to meet with mediators has hampered efforts to secure a hostage deal, an Arab diplomat tells The Times of Israel.

The mediators had wanted Israel to dispatch a delegation to Cairo over the weekend when CIA chief Bill Burns was in town and the mediators were gearing up for Hamas’s official response to the latest proposal, the diplomat says, claiming Israel’s absence led it to be being out of the loop.

According to the Axios news site, Israeli officials had expected Burns to brief them regarding developments over the weekend and felt that the CIA chief had failed to do so.

Following Hamas’s Monday response, Israel sent a lower-level negotiating team to Cairo, while officials in Jerusalem surmised that the terror group’s latest proposal brought the parties back to square one.

The Arab diplomat speaking to The Times of Israel says this past weekend wasn’t the first time that Israel refused to send a negotiating team to meet with mediators in Cairo or Doha, which he says has slowed the negotiations.

While Israel has said it only sends negotiators when Hamas is showing genuine interest in reaching a compromise, the diplomat says Jerusalem’s policy has been “politically motivated.”

He declines to elaborate but doesn’t deny the suggestion that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has refused to dispatch negotiating teams due to pressure from far-right coalition partners who want him to take a tougher stance in the talks. Other war cabinet ministers, including National Unity chairman Benny Gantz and his deputy Gadi Eisenkot, have argued that Israel should always show willingness to hold talks, while sticking to guiding principles once the negotiating team is in the room.