The report suggests that negotiations are reaching a critical moment as the CIA chief is dispatched to bring a deal home
Israel and Hamas may be close to agreement on the basic principles for a 35-day cease-fire that would see the release of all the hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners and detainees from Israeli jails, Haaretz reported, citing officials involved in the negotiations.
The report comes as pressure is mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to bring an end to Israel’s three-and-a-half-month war in Gaza, which has killed more than 200 Israeli soldiers and 26,000 Palestinians.
If Israel is now contemplating a truce, this would signal the closest the two sides have come to halting the fighting in Gaza since a seven-day truce expired at the end of November, when about 110 hostages were released, and 350 Palestinian prisoners were set free.
But the Haaretz report suggests that Israel and Hamas are still stuck over the most important point: Whether the ceasefire would be permanent.
"There may be some minor changes to the outline, but the central problem that needs to be solved is the question of the complete cease-fire that Hamas insists on," Haaretz quoted its source as saying.
The report comes as CIA director Bill Burns prepares to travel to Europe for meetings with spy chiefs from Israel and Egypt, as well as the prime minister of Qatar, the team that has been negotiating a series of unrealized ceasefire agreements between Israel and Hamas.
President Biden reportedly told Netanyahu last week that he will not support a long war in Gaza, the news brief site Axios reported. At least a third of Biden's 40-minute call with Netanyahu on Jan. 19 focused on the Israeli timetable for moving to low-intensity operations across the Gaza Strip and Israel's war strategy as a whole, Axios said, citing an unidentified U.S. official.
Biden urged Netanyahu to move faster to low-intensity operations that would decrease the number of civilian casualties and asked Netanyahu several times for his plan and strategy in Gaza, saying he did not understand Netanyahu’s vision of the "end state" for Gaza.
Earlier, the Washington Post reported that Hamas had rejected an Israeli proposal that included a 60-day pause in fighting in exchange for the gradual release of over 100 hostages: First women and children, then men, soldiers, and the bodies of hostages still held by Hamas. But that proposal broke down over Israel’s refusal for a permanent end to the fighting before it would release any hostages and Hamas’ refusal to exile its top leaders from Gaza to a third country.
Despite the report that Israel's war cabinet is considering a new ceasefire proposal, Netanyahu doubled down on Israel’s war aims Thursday saying he would stop at nothing short of “the elimination” of Hamas.
“Hamas came to uproot us; we will uproot it. Hamas came to exterminate us; we will exterminate it. We will deepen our roots in our land; we will uproot our enemies. We will be here, and they will not,” Netanyahu said at a tree-planting ceremony in Gaza on Israel’s arbor day.
“A decisive victory means the elimination of Hamas, the return of our hostages, and we won’t give up that goal,” he said. “I say in the clearest way, there is no substitute for deepening our roots [in this land] and no substitute for complete victory over our enemies.”