CIA Director William Burns PHOTO: NATHAN HOWARD/REUTERS
By Jared Malsin
and Summer Said
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns concluded negotiations with top Middle Eastern officials on Tuesday without making major strides toward a deal between Israel and Hamas that would free hostages and pause fighting in the Gaza Strip, according to officials familiar with the talks.
Burns held talks with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, as well as Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, the officials said.
The talks in the Egyptian capital were part of an intensifying effort by the Biden administration to achieve a cease-fire in Gaza and bring to a halt a conflict that has reduced much of the coastal enclave to ruins and pushed the Middle East to the brink of a regional war.
A team of Israeli security officials led by Barnea left Cairo on Tuesday evening without closing any of the major gaps in the negotiations, including the duration of a cease-fire and the ratio of Palestinian prisoners to be released for each hostage, Egyptian officials said. The Israeli officials reiterated the government’s view that Hamas’s terms for the deal are unrealistic, they said. Hamas officials didn’t participate in the talks in Cairo.
A U.S. official said there was no breakthrough or breakdown in the negotiations. Egyptian officials said the talks would continue through diplomatic and security channels in the coming days.
Tuesday’s talks were held as Israel is preparing to expand its military operations into the city of Rafah on Gaza’s border with Egypt, where more than a million Palestinian civilians are sheltering. A ground assault in Rafah would likely deepen the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the Gaza Strip, where aid agencies say much of the population is at risk of famine.
During the negotiations in Cairo on Tuesday, Israeli officials warned that if Hamas fails to accept Israel’s terms for a temporary cease-fire, Israel’s military would proceed with an offensive in Rafah, according to officials familiar with the talks.
The Israeli military’s top commander, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, separately said Tuesday that his forces would expand to new areas of operations. “We have plans, and we will choose the right time to carry them out and, of course, the right way to do so,” he said in a statement.
Halevi said Israeli forces are returning to areas in northern Gaza, as militants stream into zones previously cleared by the Israeli offensive. Operations are also continuing in Khan Younis, where Halevi said Israel is working to systematically destroy Hamas’s infrastructure.
Israel’s military has said it believes senior Hamas leaders are sheltering in tunnels underneath Khan Younis and other cities in the Gaza Strip. The military on Tuesday screened footage that it claimed showed Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, traversing a Khan Younis tunnel with family. The video is from the early days of the war, the military said.
South Africa’s government said Tuesday that it had made an urgent request to the International Court of Justice to consider whether Israel’s plans to extend its operations in Rafah require the court to use its power to prevent further harm to Palestinians in Gaza. Last month, the United Nations court ordered Israel to take measures to prevent the destruction of the enclave’s Palestinian community and enable the entry of humanitarian aid, but declined to order a cease-fire in Gaza.
The Israeli government declined to comment. Representatives for the ICJ didn’t respond to a request for comment. The court, which is based in The Hague, has no power to enforce its decisions. The court issued a preliminary order in 2022 for Russia to cease military operations in Ukraine that the Kremlin has ignored.
Israel’s war with Hamas has killed more than 28,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to Palestinian health officials, whose figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel launched its military offensive after the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7 in which the group killed some 1,139 people, most of them civilians, and took more than 240 hostages, according to Israeli authorities.
Several released hostages and families of people still held by Hamas are traveling on Wednesday to The Hague to submit a complaint to the International Criminal Court about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks.
In contrast to the ICJ, which hears disputes between states, the ICC can prosecute individuals for grave breaches of international law such as genocide when a member nation’s judiciary can’t or won’t take action. Like the U.S. and Russia, Israel doesn’t belong to the ICC, but the Palestinian Authority has joined the court, which in 2021 opened an investigation into the situation in the Palestinian territories. ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan escalated the matter after the war broke out, and has cited both the atrocities committed by Hamas and the civilian casualties of Israel’s military response as under investigation.
Tuesday’s talks in Cairo followed days of diplomacy by the U.S. and regional powers toward a cease-fire.
Israel last week rejected an earlier proposal by Hamas that called for the potential release of thousands of Palestinians detained in Israeli prisons along with a phased Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza. Hamas—which the U.S., European governments and others consider a terrorist organization—sent its detailed offer in response to broad outlines of a deal that had been given initial approvalby the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and Israel’s Mossad in Paris. The framework discussed in Paris called for a pause in fighting divided into three stages, starting with a six-week cease-fire, during which hostages would be released, starting with civilians and then ending with Israeli soldiers and the bodies of deceased hostages.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week said that the Hamas proposal was unacceptable to Israel and vowed to continue the war, aimed at eliminating Hamas and its military capabilities in Gaza. Israel wants any cease-fire to be temporary, while Hamas wants one that will lead to a permanent truce. Israel has also resisted Hamas’s demands for a complete withdrawal of its military from Gaza, according to officials familiar with the talks.
The decision by the Israeli government to dispatch a team for Tuesday’s talks came after President Biden piled pressure on Netanyahu during a Sunday phone call, the officials said.
Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, Israel’s internal security service, was also part of the Israeli delegation in Cairo, they said. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who has been charged with helping to lead efforts to recover hostages, had been expected to participate in the talks but didn’t attend, officials said.
Officials from Egypt and Qatar have in recent days drafted a possible compromise in which Israel would release from detention three Palestinians for each hostage freed from Gaza during an initial six-week cease-fire, according to officials familiar with the talks.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group representing the Israeli captives, on Tuesday issued a public plea to Barnea and the other Israeli security officials in Cairo. “Do not return until everyone comes home—the living and the dead,” the group said. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime mission.”
Israel and Hamas accepted a weeklong cease-fire in November that resulted in the release of more than 100 hostages in exchange for the release of around 240 Palestinians. The fighting resumed after negotiations toward an extension of the deal broke down
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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