From the Liveblog of
Friday, August 23, 2024
White House denies mounting reports of hostage-truce talks collapsing, insists progress being made
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
The White House denies mounting reports that the hostage-ceasefire negotiations the US has been co-brokering between Israel and Hamas are on the verge of collapse.
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby claims in a briefing with reporters that progress was made in talks yesterday in Cairo, though those negotiations were largely between Israel and Egypt.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been insisting on a new demand he submitted last month that Israel be allowed to maintain its forces in the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent weapon smuggling from Egypt to Gaza. But Cairo and Hamas oppose the stance, and the US has sought to advance alternative solutions to prevent smuggling without keeping the IDF along the Egypt-Gaza border. Netanyahu has continued to insist that he won’t budge on the issue.
“There has been progress made. We need now for both sides to come together and work toward implementation,” he says, noting that talks in Cairo are continuing today and that CIA Director Bill Burns will participate in those discussions.
Last Friday, the White House submitted what it branded as a “final bridging proposal” aimed at closing the gaps between Israel and Hamas as the sides near an 11th month of fighting.
Israel accepted the offer. Hamas officials have issued statements criticizing it, but they have yet to formally reject the proposal.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier this week that even if Hamas accepts the US proposal, the sides still will need to hold subsequent talks to finalize the implementation of the deal, adding another step to a process that has dragged on for months.
In submitting the bridging proposal after a high-level summit in Doha last week, the US said it aimed to reconvene the top officials in Cairo at the end of this week to finalize the deal.
While Israel will be participating in the Cairo talks along with top mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US, Hamas is not formally participating.
In today’s briefing, Kirby did not indicate that the sides in Cairo were on the verge of finalizing a deal either.
The Egyptian and Qatari mediators are in touch with the terror group, but Arab officials from mediating countries did not express a lot of optimism about the trajectory of the talks when speaking to The Times of Israel earlier this week, saying that the US bridging proposal went too far to accommodate new Israeli demands, including on the Philadelphi Corridor.
