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U.S. officials voiced confidence Friday that a cease-fire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas could be closed as early as next week, even as the Palestinian militant group seems poised to reject a “bridging proposal” that mediators unveiled in Doha.
Mediators from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar on Friday offered Israel and Hamas a proposal to address continued disagreements over implementing a cease-fire and the release of hostages. In a joint statement today, the three countries said that they aim “to conclude the deal under the terms put forward today” when they reconvene next week in Cairo.
President Joe Biden told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that “we are closer to a deal than we have ever been.” And a senior administration official told reporters the proposal “is a comprehensive arrangement. It has been negotiated for months, and we do believe very strongly, and there’s momentum here in this process to work to bring this to conclusion.” The official provided the media briefing on condition that they be granted anonymity.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also travel to the region this weekend, where he will meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials.
But Hamas officials, who skipped the talks, told Agence-France Presse, the BBC and other outlets that the framework presented in Doha contains new conditions they cannot agree to and argued it does not align with past versions they accepted.
The details of the “bridging proposal” have not been publicly shared by any of the parties involved, and it is unclear what aspects Hamas feels it can’t accept. But U.S. officials have in the past said that Israel and Hamas were in disagreement over just a handful of implementation issues, including the timing of a swap of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli custody and Israeli hostages held by Hamas.
Another flashpoint in the negotiations includes the status of the Philadelphi corridor, a buffer zone between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Israel has pushed to control the area in recent weeks as a security measure to deter future attacks into its territory from Hamas. The senior administration official said that the issue has been discussed with Egypt as part of recent talks and said it is “moving in the right way.”
Some Middle East analysts argued that Hamas’ reaction may not be a large setback in the grand scheme of peace talks. Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. negotiator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said in an interview that “nobody expected” a deal or anything remotely close to it coming out of this week’s cease-fire talks in Doha.
A bit more time, he added, might even be helpful, as neither side in his view is ready to close on a permanent cease-fire.
“At best, you’re talking about phase one, six weeks, because no one is prepared to go beyond that,” said Miller, who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
The region is still bracing for greater conflict, including a potential attack from Iran. And Israel ordered civilians today to evacuate areas in Gaza that had previously been considered to be “civilian safe zones,” alleging that Hamas militants were firing rockets from the civilian areas to fire rockets.
Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute think tank in Washington, said pressure is likely to build inside Iran to take action “if it takes too long and it becomes increasingly clear that this is an exercise to hold off attacks and retaliation, rather than actually securing a cease-fire.”
