No progress was made towards the completion of a hostage deal/ceasefire agreement on Thursday, and CIA Director William J. Burns, who was in Doha for the talks, left Qatar after being there for a day, a US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told The Washington Post on Friday.
Burns is no longer in the Middle East, the official told the American news outlet. Nevertheless, negotiations are still underway as Israel, Hamas, and American, Egyptian, and Qatari mediators “want to prepare the ground for Trump,” a member of a diplomatic mission in the Middle East told the Post.
“They know that if they don’t reach such an agreement, it will not be a good thing for any of them, including the Israelis,” the member of the diplomatic mission said. “I think this has resulted in a lot of developments. … The question is whether [or not] they wait for Trump.”
Nevertheless, current progress in the talks remains stuck for the time being, as the two sides remain at an impasse over a couple of Israeli demands, Egyptian officials told the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese news outlet Al-Akhbar on Friday.
Sticking points
The most notable of these points, according to the Lebanese news organization, is Israel’s requirement that Hamas provide it with a list of the names of all the hostages, living and dead.
Hamas sources told Al-Akhbar on Thursday that this demand would first require at least a one-week pause in the fighting so that Hamas and other terrorists could have enough space to locate and determine the status of the remaining hostages.
The other main Israeli demand that is causing a holdup in the talks, Hamas sources told Al-Akhbar, is that captive Israeli soldiers be included “in lists of prisoners who meet the criteria for the humanitarian phase.”
Sam Halpern contributed to this report.
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