Hamas has dropped its demand for an upfront pledge that Israel ends the war, a move that prompted Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to send a team led by Mossad Director David Barnea to participate in further negotiations in Doha for a deal, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Netanyahu spoke with US President Joe Biden and informed him that Israel would participate in talks based on the latest draft of the three-phase deal which Israel received on Wednesday. It’s a proposal that deals with the release of the remaining 120 hostages and the issue of a Gaza ceasefire.
The terror group is still expected to demand a commitment to a permanent ceasefire, possibly even before the completion of phase one, but would allow that first phase to get underway without such a pledge.
It’s a key shift in the group’s position that has sparked cautious hope that the deadlock that greeted the proposal Biden unveiled on May 31, may now finally have been broken, allowing for closure of the deal.
Multiple top defense officials call the new pending negotiations the closest Israel has been to achieving a hostage deal with Hamas, since the November agreement which saw the release of 105 of the 251 hostages seized during the Hamas-led invasion of Israel on October 7.
A US official told reporters that “we’ve had a breakthrough on what has been a critical impasse in the deal. The framework of the deal is now fully consistent with the president’s speech and the UN Security Council resolution” approved last month that backed the deal.
What needs to be worked out now, the official said, is “the implementation sequencing.”
Hamas’s response, the official said, “moves the process forward and may provide the basis for closing a deal.”“This does not mean this deal is going to be closed in a period of days. There’s significant work to be done on”, the official explained, but added that what is significant is that there is an agreement on the larger framework.
“What we got back Hamas was a pretty significant adjustment to what had been their position. And think that is encouraging,” the official said. “It’s time to close this out because the lives of the hostages are on the line.”
The official added that during the 30-minute call Netanyahu and Biden “walked through the draft agreement and outstanding issues.
Details of a potential deal
An Israeli government source said Netanyahu reiterated to Biden the principles Israel upholds, “chief among them Israel’s commitment to ending the war only after achieving all of its goals,” the Prime Minister’s Office stated.
The security cabinet met on Thursday night to further discuss the issue.
A Palestinian official close to the mediation effort told Reuters that Hamas has shown flexibility over some clauses that would allow a framework agreement to be reached should Israel approve. Two Hamas officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The three-phase deal involved the release of 33 humanitarian hostages during stage one, which would last for 42 days, in exchange for a lull in the war. Talks would be held on the issue of a permanent ceasefire starting on day 16 and would be concluded before phase two, would begin.
Israel has offered a number of new compromises which the Post has been told about, some of which cannot yet be fully disclosed.
Since May, Hamas has demanded to free only 18 hostages during the first phase, and there are no reports that it has budged on this demand even as Israel returns to full-fledged negotiations.
This allows Netanyahu to claim that, at least so far, he has not agreed to end the war, though there is a strong chance that eventually, this would be the outcome of the negotiations.
The US has always presumed that once the war was halted temporarily, this lull would lead to a permanent ceasefire.
A US official on Thursday said, “it is our hope and expectation that this deal would lead to a permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages alive and remains, and the beginning of three to five year reconstruction plan.”
A decision by Israel to resume the war, however, would bring an end to the release of hostages.
This new round of negotiations, once they restart, is expected to take between two to three weeks, due to the difficulty of Hamas’s external leadership communicating with Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar, who is hiding in tunnels and is not easily reachable.
Many details regarding the deal need to be nailed down, such as who will be on the list of hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners and terrorists who will be released from Israeli jails during stages one and two of the deal. It’s expected that some of the Palestinian prisoners set to be freed will have been jailed for killing Israelis.
Sources said that three major factors helped sway Hamas to show flexibility.
The first was real pressure from Qatar for possibly the first time in nine months, sources said. Doha and Cairo have served as the main mediators for a hostage deal, with help from the United States.
The second factor has been increased pressure by Biden and his main negotiator CIA Director William Burns who have threatened to walk away from negotiations and to leave Hamas versus Israel with no broker who can rein in Jerusalem.
Third, the Egyptians have also increased their pressure on Hamas.
While there have been constant debates and differences between Netanyahu, Barnea, and IDF Maj.- Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon on behalf of the military, Barnea has taken the lead in moving things forward with Burns and Qatar.
Netanyahu has faced stiff opposition from National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich regarding any moves to end the war without the full defeat of Hamas, which experts speculate could take years.
The sudden surge of movement on the largely dormant hostage deal comes as Netanyahu is set to travel to Washington to address a joint session of Congress. He is also likely to meet with Biden, but no official announcement has been made.
In their conversation on Thursday, Netanyahu congratulated Biden and the American people on their July 4 celebration of Independence Day.
“The Prime Minister said that without the US there would be no freedom in the world. President Biden said that without Israel there would be no security for Jews in the world,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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