The Palestinian militant group Hamas said Monday that it had agreed to a cease-fire brokered by Egypt and Qatar that aims to end the 7-month-old war with Israel. The insurgent group announced in a statement that the head of its political bureau, Ismail Haniyeh, signaled to mediators that it would accept the proposal.
Israel issued a brief statement casting doubt on a breakthrough but said delegates would continue to negotiate a pause in the brutal fighting.
“While the Hamas proposal is far from meeting Israel’s core demands, Israel will dispatch a ranking delegation to Egypt in an effort to maximize the possibility of reaching an agreement on terms acceptable to Israel,” the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. It offered no further details on the proposal. Israel had concerns that Hamas tried to preempt the talks by agreeing to a cease-fire draft that differed from the one given to Israel.
Officials in Washington scrambled for details of the Hamas proposal and were uncertain whether a real breakthrough had been achieved. The situation was muddied further by reports that Israeli forces had begun another round of “targeted” missile attacks on Hamas positions in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah hours after Hamas said it was ready to accept the cease-fire deal.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby and State Department spokesman Mark Miller said U.S. officials were studying the proposal. CIA Director William J. Burns has been in the region trying to help fashion a deal. Mr. Kirby said the intelligence chief was consulting with parties across the region about the state of negotiations.
Mr. Miller told reporters it “remains our top priority to try to reach a cease-fire agreement that will lead to the release of hostages [and] will allow a surge of humanitarian assistance into Gaza. We have only received the response in the last hour or 90 minutes. We don’t want to characterize the nature of that response just yet.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other U.S. officials have pressed the Netanyahu government to curb the fighting but say Hamas has made demands they know the Jewish state would never accept.
“Israel has made significant compromises, which showed that they wanted to reach an agreement …,” Mr. Miller said. “The ball has been in Hamas’ court, and we have made clear they should accept that offer.”
Mr. Kirby said President Biden and Mr. Netanyahu talked by phone Monday morning about the state of the war and U.S. reservations about an offensive into Rafah. He said the news that Hamas officials had accepted a deal broke after they conferred.
Hamas said the deal would return the displaced residents of Gaza, complete a prisoner exchange, and allow for reconstruction and relief efforts in the Palestinian enclave.
“The movement affirms its positive and responsible approach and its keenness and determination to reach an agreement that meets the national demands of our people, ends the aggression completely [and] achieves withdrawal from the entire Gaza Strip,” Hamas said on its Telegram page.
Mr. Netanyahu’s government was considering its next diplomatic move. Israel Defense Forces had been planning an operation in Rafah, a city in the southern Gaza Strip where the last remnants of Hamas are thought to be operating. The Biden administration has been pressuring the Netanyahu government to delay the assault as cease-fire talks proceeded.
The IDF has told residents of Rafah, where more than 1.4 million civilians are sheltering, to leave the city. Mr. Miller and Mr. Kirby made clear that Washington remained strongly opposed to a major Israeli offensive into Rafah.
“We believe a military operation in Rafah right now would dramatically increase the suffering of the Palestinian people [and] would dramatically disrupt the delivery of humanitarian assistance,” Mr. Miller said.
While Israel’s political leaders conferred in the face of massive international pressure to accept a deal, the spokesman for the IDF told reporters that the marching orders for Israel’s military had not changed.
“We are exploring every single thing that we hear,” Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari told a briefing, “and we are exhausting the potential about negotiations and bringing back the hostages. … But in parallel, we are continuing to act in an operational manner in the Gaza Strip, and we will continue to do so.”
Monitoring Rafah
Hamas has sought a permanent cease-fire that would, in effect, end the war, which began in October when its fighters stormed across the border and killed at least 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took hundreds of others hostage. Israel wants a temporary halt in the fighting that would allow for the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners.
The pressure on Israel is likely to grow. Jordanian King Abdullah II, who met with Mr. Biden at the White House on Monday, strongly condemned the latest missile attacks on Rafah. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York appealed to Israel to accept a cease-fire amid reports that the U.N. Security Council may take up the crisis in a closed-door session Tuesday.
In Israel, the opposition leader and a group representing the families of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas assailed Mr. Netanyahu.
The Hamas statement “must pave the way for the return of the 132 hostages held captive by Hamas for the past seven months. Now is the time for all that are involved, to fulfill their commitment and turn this opportunity into a deal for the return of all the hostages,” a statement from The Hostage and Missing Families Forum said. A group of protesters demanding a cease-fire deal that includes the release of the hostages demonstrated outside the government’s offices.
Yair Lapid, head of the Knesset’s main opposition faction, said in a social media post, “A government that wants to return the abductees should be convening an urgent discussion and sending [negotiating] teams to Cairo, not hysterically issuing three different briefings from different parties and crushing the hearts of the families. A national disgrace.”
Maj. Gen. Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke over the weekend with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. They discussed the hostage negotiations and ongoing efforts to move humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. Mr. Austin offered his condolences for the Israeli soldiers killed in a rocket attack fired from Rafah.
U.S. officials are continuing to monitor Israeli plans to evacuate Rafah ahead of a clash with Hamas fighters. Pentagon officials have seen basic concepts of Israel’s expected operation but not the detailed plans of how its troops would move against Hamas hard-liners and evacuate noncombatant civilians.
“We’ve been very clear, publicly and privately, we still want to ensure that civilian safety and humanitarian assistance is taken into account,” Gen. Ryder said. “We are continuing to emphasize that to our Israeli partners.”
Gen. Ryder couldn’t confirm reports that the White House halted a shipment of military aid to Israel over Mr. Netanyahu’s apparent decision to move forward with a ground assault in Rafah. Mr. Biden has faced intense pressure from Democrats on Capitol Hill and many in his liberal political base to curb or cut off all military aid to the Netanyahu government. The Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry says nearly 35,000 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since Oct. 7.
The Reuters news service, citing Hamas Deputy Chief Khalil Al-Hayya, said the cease-fire deal on the table has three 42-day stages. The first stage would feature an Israeli-Palestinian prisoner swap, which includes Israeli civilians. The second phase mandates that Israel completely withdraw from Gaza. The third phase would end Israel’s economic blockade of the densely populated but desperately poor Palestinian enclave.
Hamas officials said the accord refers to a “permanent” end to the Israeli campaign in Gaza. Mr. Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly rejected that wording. Israel is determined to crush Hamas as a fighting force to avenge the Oct. 7 surprise attack.
Video shown on the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera showed crowds in the Gaza Strip apparently celebrating in the streets over the news of a possible cease-fire deal.
• This article is based in part on wire service reports.
• Mike Glenn can be reached at mglenn@washingtontimes.com.
• David R. Sands can be reached at dsands@washingtontimes.com.
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