US ‘bridging proposal’ for Gaza deal said to exclude two of Netanyahu’s key demands
Further talks set for Cairo on Sunday, as Blinken heads to Israel; mediators aiming to finalize deal in days, PM’s office cites optimism, but Hamas indicates it will reject terms
The US “bridging proposal” designed to enable the finalizing of a hostages-for-ceasefire deal in the coming week does not provide for an ongoing Israeli presence along the Gaza-Egypt border or for a mechanism in central Gaza to prevent the return of armed Hamas forces to the Strip’s north, as demanded by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Hebrew media reported Saturday, citing unnamed officials familiar with the talks.
Channel 12 reported that negotiations involving the US and Israel are set to continue in Cairo on Sunday. Only if Israel and the US can agree on terms for these two key issues will Egypt and Qatar press Hamas to take the deal, the report said. Hamas has made clear that it will not agree to a deal that accommodates these two Israeli demands, the report noted.
The TV report added that Netanyahu, who has repeatedly insisted on these two demands in recent weeks, is expected to hold a crucial discussion with Israel’s negotiators and security chiefs, focused on these issues, before Sunday’s talks get underway in the Egyptian capital.
He is also slated to hold talks with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is due to arrive in Israel on Sunday.
In a statement issued on Saturday evening, Netanyahu’s office said Israel’s negotiators had briefed him on the talks, and “expressed cautious optimism regarding the possibility of advancing a deal.” It said the new US proposal, which was conveyed to Israel and to Hamas on Friday at the end of two days of talks between Israel and the mediators in Doha, “contains components that are acceptable to Israel.”
“We must hope that the heavy pressure on Hamas from the United States and the mediators leads to the removal of its opposition to the American proposal, and allows for a breakthrough in the contacts,” the statement added.
US officials have previously said that the return of armed Hamas forces to northern Gaza — across the Netzarim Corridor that the IDF has established separating the north and the south of the Strip — would constitute a violation of the deal. According to a Walla News report on Saturday, the mediators have now proposed a clause that gives Israel the right to resume military hostilities against Hamas if weapons are moved into northern Gaza. (The IDF would be required to withdraw from the Netzarim area in the first phase of the deal.)
Israeli and other sources have said that Israel’s security chiefs believe withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza border for the six weeks of the deal’s first phase would not enable Hamas to significantly rearm, and that certain unspecified procedures along the border could compensate for an Israeli withdrawal from the border area. Israel’s Channel 13 news, citing Egyptian sources, said Israel and Egypt were working on an arrangement as regards the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah border crossing.
The US, backed by fellow mediators Qatar and Egypt, conveyed its bridging proposal to Israel and Hamas at the end of the Thursday-Friday summit in Doha. Israel and the mediators attended the summit; Hamas officials in Doha were updated on the progress of the talks there but did not directly participate.
Another such summit is reportedly tentatively scheduled, this time for Cairo, on Wednesday or Thursday. US officials have said they aim to finalize the long-sought deal by the end of this coming week.
President Joe Biden and other US officials have expressed guarded optimism about the progress of the negotiations while stressing that obstacles remain. Hamas officials have indicated that they oppose the latest formulations, with sources stating Friday that the group insisted on a permanent ceasefire, a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the return of displaced Gazans, and a hostage-prisoners exchange.
An Israeli official with knowledge of the negotiations told Walla that Hamas was likely to turn down the latest proposal, regarding it as broadly mirroring Israel’s positions.
Netanyahu has insisted that any deal must meet both Israel’s key war aims — the return of all hostages and the destruction of Hamas. He has denied that the May 27 Israeli proposal on which the ongoing talks is based provides for a permanent ceasefire, even though the published text indicates that it does.
Two pre-October 7 hostages would be freed
According to Saturday’s Channel 12 report, the “bridging proposal” covers numerous highly specific issues regarding the deal. Among these, it specifies how many living Israeli hostages will go free in the first, six-week phase of the deal; it has previously been widely reported that some 30 women, elderly and sick hostages will be freed. The names of almost all of these hostages have also been largely determined, the report says.
The proposal also specifies the order in which hostages will be freed, with women — including female soldiers — to be released first.
The proposal reflects progress, too, on which Palestinian security prisoners are to be released in exchange for the hostages.
Walla said Israel has offered to veto fewer specific terrorists’ releases if Hamas frees more hostages in each of the six weeks of the deal’s first stage, and that this element has been included in the bridging proposal.
The Channel 12 TV report said that Ethiopian Israeli Avera Mengistu and Bedouin Israeli Hisham al-Sayed, civilians who have been held in Gaza for the past decade, would also go free in the first phase of the deal. In return, it says, 47 Palestinian security prisoners, released in the 2011 deal to secure the freedom of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who have been rearrested since, would be freed as part of the deal.
The report stressed, however, that these elements in the bridging proposal have been agreed to by Israel and the mediators — but not by Hamas.
Walla’s report on Saturday night also cited an Israeli official as saying that the US-professed optimism was at least partially aimed at convincing Iran to delay its threatened revenge attack on Israel for the killing in Tehran on July 31 of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, a killing it blames on Israel. The US has also been pressing Lebanese terror group Hezbollah not to strike Israel following the IDF’s killing of its military chief Fuad Shukr in Beirut hours before Haniyeh’s death.
Similarly, a foreign source involved in the talks told the Kan public broadcaster that “the mediators are continuing to talk with Iran and Hezbollah and encouraging them not to escalate the situation.”
The same source reportedly expressed “very cautious optimism” that a deal could be concluded before next weekend’s Cairo summit.
The hostages-for-ceasefire deal being negotiated is based on the May 27 Israeli proposal that Biden outlined in a May 31 speech. Israel has since added “clarifications” to its negotiating positions.
It is believed that 111 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the terror group’s October 7 rampage remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. The onslaught saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, sparking the war in Gaza.
