Report: CIA director to meet Mossad chief, Qatari, Egyptian officials in Rome on Sunday for hostage deal

CIA director Bill Burns is reportedly heading to Rome this weekend to meet with Mossad chief David Barnea, along with Qatari and Egyptian officials, to try to close a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas, the Axios news site reports, citing officials in Washington and Jerusalem.

According to the report, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel will attend the Sunday meeting, which will focus on strategy moving forward rather than closing the remaining gaps in the deal currently on the table.

An Israeli official quoted in the report cast doubt on the chances of a breakthrough, citing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent hardening of Israel’s demands for a deal.

“Netanyahu wants a deal that is impossible to get. At the moment he isn’t willing to move and therefore we might be headed for a crisis in the negotiations rather than a deal,” the official is quoted as saying.

Netanyahu is believed to be apprehensive of agreeing to a deal, which would cause his far-right partners Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich to bolt the coalition, as they’ve warned they would do, fearing it would end the war before Hamas is fully defeated.

The report also cites an unnamed source as saying that US President Joe Biden is still unsure if Netanyahu genuinely wants to close the deal or is just buying time to keep his coalition from breaking up.

Netanyahu, who has been in Washington since Monday, held a three-hour meeting with Biden in the White House yesterday.

He also met separately with US Vice President and presumed Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in Washington yesterday and is currently meeting with the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, in Florida.