Warren P. Strobel - The Wall Street Journal
America’s most senior intelligence and defense officials are beginning a new round of on-the-ground diplomacy aimed at resurrecting talks to release hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza and bringing Israel’s war there to a conclusion.
CIA Director William Burns traveled to Warsaw on Monday to meet with his Israeli counterpart David Barnea, the head of Mossad, and the Qatari prime minister, according to Egyptian officials and another person familiar with the talks. The meetings are an effort to restart discussions over the hostages, a U.S. official said. The U.S. secretary of defense and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff arrived in Israel for the latest discussions with the country’s war cabinet.
The deployment of high-level U.S. officials is a sign of the Biden administration’s intense focus on resolving the most complicated situation in the history of hostage negotiations and ending the bloodshed in Gaza where health authorities say more than 19,000 people have died. The talks have gained more urgency following the killing by Israeli forces in Gaza of three hostages held by Hamas as they held up a white flag on Friday, an incident that has strengthened public calls in Israel to give priority to the release of hostages over other military objectives.
Burns visited Doha, Qatar, last month to meet with Barnea, chief of Israel’s intelligence agency, and senior Qatari officials. Those discussions were part of negotiations that led to the release of hostages in return for a pause in Israel’s assault on the Gaza strip following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, which left 1,200 people dead and more than 200 held hostage, according to Israeli authorities.
The weeklong cease-fire fell apart at the start of this month, with each side blaming the other for the collapse of the deal to free hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting and the release of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli custody.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin is due in Israel with Joint Chiefs of Staff. Gen. CQ Brown Jr. on Monday to meet with the five members of Israel’s war cabinet including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and minister Benny Gantz.
CIA Director in Talks With Israelis to Restart Hamas Hostage Deal© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
Austin and Brown are arriving after an especially tumultuous weekend in the war that has raged for more than 70 days, following the killing Friday of three Israeli hostages in a case of mistaken identity, and a deadly raid of a hospital in the strip that Israel said was being used by militants.
Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Sunday night that Hamas’s demands for a full cease-fire wouldn’t dissuade the Israeli military from its war aim of completely dismantling Hamas.
“Senior Hamas officials declared the return of hostages possible, only with an immediate end of the ground operation. It’s important for me to clarify—the IDF is determined to dismantle Hamas,” said Hagari.
Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said in a news conference Monday that Hamas has told Qatari and Egyptian mediators that the group won’t enter in hostage talks with Israel unless Israel ceases its war in Gaza.
“We are against any partial measures, and it is the occupation that hinders the process,” said Hamdan.
Egyptian officials said Hamas has told negotiators that it is willing to release more hostages if aid to Gaza is doubled, and Israel has to agree on a cease-fire first and withdraw its forces behind predetermined lines.
Hamas also demanded the right to decide unilaterally on a list of hostages to be released and the freeing of some longtime Palestinian prisoners including Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader in the Fatah ruling faction who is serving five life sentences for the murder of Israelis in the early 2000s.
Washington has found itself increasingly isolated in international diplomacy on Gaza for its support for Israel’s military operation and rejection of calls for a cease-fire. In an apparent shift in rhetoric, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called at the weekend for a sustainable cease-fire in the conflict.
CIA Director in Talks With Israelis to Restart Hamas Hostage Deal© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
However, the two foreign ministers said for that to be achievable, Hamas must release all the hostages and lay down their arms, which is in line with the U.S. and Israeli position. Writing in the British newspaper, the Sunday Times, they said that without those steps, a cessation of hostilities was unlikely to succeed.
Britain and Germany were among the staunchest international supporters of Israel in the first weeks of the conflict, with the British government and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemning the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and saying Israel had the right to fight Hamas in Gaza in response. In recent weeks however both governments have expressed concerns about the mounting death toll, even as they held back from growing European calls for a cease-fire.
Both countries abstained on United Nations’ Chief António Guterres’s Article 99 non-binding resolution in New York last week, which sought an immediate cease-fire to avoid a humanitarian disaster that would threaten international peace and security. The U.S. acted alone to veto the resolution at the U.N.’s Security Council.
British officials said that the new language from Berlin and London was meant in part to try to bring Washington aboard a joint position which would avoid another U.S. veto.
The U.N.’s top table could vote as soon as Monday on a new United Arab Emirates draft resolution, which calls for an urgent cessation of hostilities and lays a stress on opening up all access points, by land, air and sea, to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.
On Saturday, Barnea met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Oslo to discuss a restart of hostage talks. During the meeting, Barnea said Israel was open to increasing aid to Gaza and to Hamas deciding the list, but would have to review the names first and the timeline of any release, according to the Egyptian officials. Barnea also said that Israel was willing to look into freeing long-term Palestinian prisoners including those convicted of killing Israelis but wouldn’t agree on a cease-fire before negotiations start, according to the officials.
Both Qatar and Egypt, who have previously pressured Israel to open the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza for aid trucks as a precondition to restart the talks, have proposed to Hamas new ideas to try to get more hostages freed beyond the remaining women and children hostages. The crossing opened on Sunday for the entry of aid trucks for the first time since the start of the war.
CIA Director in Talks With Israelis to Restart Hamas Hostage Deal© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
CIA Director in Talks With Israelis to Restart Hamas Hostage Deal© Provided by The Wall Street Journal
Among ideas exchanged between the negotiating parties is to release women, and elderly and civilian men in exchange for some high-profile Palestinian prisoners, according to the Egyptian officials and a person familiar with talks. Other ideas include a deal that could include the return of at least six Israeli soldiers taken hostage on Oct. 7 in exchange for long-term Palestinian prisoners, including Barghouti.
The talks are more complex than previous rounds but Israel and the Egyptian and Qatari mediators are applying whatever leverage they have on Hamas to reach a new agreement, the person said.
Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said Hamas was unhappy with how the previous hostage deal failed to blunt Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Now with their grip on Gaza in peril, Hamas is seeking a deal that will put a permanent end to the war and allow them to declare victory, he said. Israel, on the other hand, wants a deal that temporarily brings relief but renews public support for continuing the war.
“Israel wants an exchange to relieve pressure, and Hamas wants it to relieve all the pressure permanently” he said.
Complicating the talks, said Yaari, is the fact that Hamas isn’t sure how many living hostages it has and how many it can collect from the enclave to hand over to Israel in any future deal.
The entire negotiation process, he said, revolves around Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who Israeli officials and analysts believe is hiding in tunnels underneath his hometown in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
“At the end of the day it’s this one guy in the bunker who has to make a decision,” Yaari said.
Laurence Norman contributed to this article.
