As the week was coming to an end, CIA Chief William Burns was expected in Cairo for talks with Egyptian officials on the latest attempts to get Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to move towards a truce.
“The Americans are really pushing for a truce in Gaza, even if just for a few days, and we are working with them and the Qataris to get something started,” said an informed Egyptian official.
This week, during a joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi said that Egypt is working on a two-day truce that will include the release of four Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails and then move on to a 10-day negotiation process to secure a ceasefire deal.
Al-Sisi spoke after the Head of Egyptian intelligence Hassan Mahmoud Rashad met with Israeli delegates several times in less than a week to discuss details of the Egyptian proposal. The talks with Israeli security delegates, including Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar, were conducted in parallel to Cairo-hosted talks with Hamas and Fatah on details of the management of Gaza after the war ends.
While the Palestinian deal is not part of the temporary 48-hour truce that Egypt hopes will be agreed sooner rather than later, it is essential to secure Israeli agreement to move towards a ceasefire given that Netanyahu insists Hamas will not be allowed to run Gaza again.
According to the same Egyptian source, Burns’ talks with Mossad Chief David Barnea were based on the same starting point as the Egyptian proposal, deferring the most difficult points, including the dates and details of a full Israeli withdrawal, the management of Gaza after the end of the war and security measures in Gaza and along its borders, until after a short truce is secured.
What would be included in any deal, he said, are questions relating to a hostage deal “which will be gradual given Israeli objections to the list of Palestinian prisoners that Hamas wants released and Israeli demands that some of those prisoners will have to leave the occupied Palestinian territories”.
The key difference between the Egyptian and US proposals is breadth of the starting point, said the source: “We are saying stop fighting, get humanitarian aid in, allow for a limited hostage deal and then move on.”
On 24 November 2023, six weeks after the start of the war, US-supported joint Egyptian-Qatari mediation secured a truce for 48 hours that was then extended until 30 November.
The idea, according to remarks shared by the same source last year, was to move towards a sequence of short ceasefires in order reduce the intensity of fighting as a prelude to ending the war. Today, the source said, following close to 13 months of war, “lower intensity fighting” is already in place except in the north of Gaza.
Netanyahu may be more amenable to a deal, said the source, given that he “has done most of what he wanted to do in terms of weakening Hamas and eliminating its key leaders”.
And while he is keeping his eyes on the American presidential elections next Tuesday “and hoping that [Republican candidate Donald] Trump will win” he cannot exclude the possibility of a Kamala Harris victory.
In the analysis of this and other informed sources, Netanyahu feels it makes sense to “give something now” in case Harris is elected to avoid a tense start with the new US president.
While none of the five sources — three of them Egyptian — who spoke to Al-Ahram Weekly this week were particularly optimistic that a truce will be secured, one who had been very pessimistic over the chances for a deal in recent months said that “maybe there is a chance”. The reason for the “maybe”, he said, relates to the “timing of the US presidential election”, the elimination of Hamas and Hizbullah leaders, including Yahya Sinwar in Gaza and Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut, and the pressure of Israeli public opinion and of Netanyahu’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant to secure a hostage deal.
Earlier this week, Gallant said that Israel needs to make “painful concessions” to get a hostage deal done.
“Not every objective can be achieved through military means. Force is not the answer to everything,” said Gallant, speaking hours before Barnea was expected in Doha for negotiations.
In a parallel attempt to push a ceasefire, however partial, Saudi Arabia was scheduled to host the second round of its Global Alliance for the Implementation of the Two-State Solution on 30 and 31 October, an initiative launched on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly earlier this autumn.
According to a Saudi announcement, the Riyadh meeting is designed “to get on the pathway to a permanent and comprehensive peace in the Middle East”.
“The intention is not to duplicate ongoing diplomatic efforts but to promote synergies with existing mechanisms and forums.”
Meanwhile, a Beirut-based diplomatic source said that it seems “somewhat likely” that a deal could be secured on the “security measures” for south Lebanon that Israel is demanding to end its war there, though he declined to provide details of the Hizbullah disarmament and eviction from its strongholds in south Lebanon that Israel wants.
He also said that the Lebanon front would have featured in the talks that Burns has been holding in Doha and in sideline discussions expected in Riyadh.
“There is diplomatic hype for sure and there is momentum, but no one can guarantee it will deliver a deal. As we have seen during the past year, Netanyahu is quite capable of blocking a deal at the last moment,” said an informed regional diplomatic source.
In the face of renewed hopes that a deal could finally be underway, on 28 October the Israeli Knesset approved two laws in the face of international opposition that effectively ban UNRWA, the UN’s Palestinian refugee agency, from operating within Israel and — given Israeli control of every entry point into the occupied Palestinian territories — in Palestine.
In Cairo, the official assessment was the latest Israeli provocation does not necessarily contradict with work to secure a partial ceasefire. In the opinion of one official, it is part of a wider scheme that Netanyahu is pursuing to rework the parameters for the future of Gaza and the West Bank that also includes imposing buffer zones between north Gaza and south Israel and between south Lebanon and north Israel.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 31 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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