The halt in talks is a setback amid hopes for an agreement to free hostages.

 

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