The halt in talks is a setback amid hopes for an
agreement to free hostages.
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/05/09/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas-rafah
High-level
hostage negotiations in Cairo were put on hold Thursday, according to officials
briefed on the negotiations and Egyptian state media, with one official saying
that anger had flared among participants over Israel’s incursion into the
southern Gazan city Rafah.
The pause
is a setback given that some people watching the negotiations closely had seen
signs that an agreement might be in reach this week. Still, one official
briefed on the talks said that negotiators did not believe Hamas or Israel were
leaving the negotiations permanently and were interpreting the suspension as a
temporary pause rather than a derailment.
William J.
Burns, the C.I.A. director and top American negotiator, and other senior
officials departed Cairo, according to multiple officials. The officials all
spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic negotiations.
Mr. Burns,
who has been involved in daylong negotiating sessions, had extended his trip,
moving between Egypt and Israel on Wednesday to meet with Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in an effort to persuade Israel not to dismiss
Hamas’s most recent cease-fire counterproposal and to continue negotiating over
it.
While
midlevel Egyptian, Qatari and American officials remain in Cairo for
discussions, both Hamas and Israeli delegations left on Thursday, Hamas and
Israeli officials said. A senior Egyptian official told state-owned television
that mediation efforts were still underway to bridge the difference between the
most recent proposals by Israel and Hamas.
American
officials said they believed that the differences between Hamas and Israel
still could be resolved, at least enough to begin the first phase of hostage
negotiations. One proposal called for Hamas to free hostages in return for a
42-day cease-fire and the release of a much larger number of Palestinian
prisoners. That would be the first of three phases of reciprocal actions from
each side.
On
Thursday, Matthew Miller, a State Department spokesman, said that work was
continuing to finalize the text of an agreement, but that it was “incredibly
difficult.”
Egyptian
and Hamas negotiators have been enraged by Israel’s military operations in
Rafah. And the United States has argued that the military operation is
threatening the hostage talks. The Biden administration announced it would
withhold 3,500 bombs from Israel until it ended military operations in Rafah.
The Israeli
ambassador to Washington, Michael Herzog, said on Thursday that Mr. Biden’s
decision to withhold some weapons from Israel “sends the wrong message to Hamas
and to our enemies in the region.” He added, “It puts us in a corner.”
Speaking in
a public conversation hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
in Washington, Mr. Herzog said, “It will be impossible to establish a postwar
government in Gaza unless Hamas is completely vanquished. He added, “Nobody
presented to me or to us a strategy of defeating Hamas without dealing with
Rafah.”
On Monday,
Israeli tanks and troops seized the border crossing in the Gazan city, shutting
off the flow of aid from Egypt. American officials had hoped the incursion was
not the start of a larger ground invasion in Rafah, where hundreds of thousands
of displaced civilians are crammed into tent cities and temporary shelters in
the city.
The United
States believes that such an operation would weaken Israel’s position in
cease-fire negotiations and diminish its international standing, Mr. Miller
said on Thursday. The United States also believes that the operation, “in
addition to all the harm it would cause to the Palestinian people, actually
weakens Israel’s security,” he added.
Israeli
officials have reacted with defiance, saying the invasion is necessary to
dismantle Hamas as a fighting force in Rafah.
Anushka
Patil and Michael Crowley contributed reporting.
— Julian E.
Barnes, Vivian Yee, Aaron Boxerman and Adam Rasgon
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