CIA director to meet Israeli, Qatari and Egyptian officials in Rome on Gaza deal

• President Biden, who sees freeing the hostages and ending the war in Gaza as key to his legacy, told the families of U.S. hostages on Thursday that he will continue pushing for a deal in the time he has left in office.
• The families said after the meeting with Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu they are more optimistic than before that a hostage and ceasefire deal could move forward in the coming days.

Driving the news: Netanyahu has toughened his position on the deal and added new demands, such as establishing a mechanism for monitoring the movement of weapons and Palestinian militants from southern Gaza to the north and maintaining Israeli control over the Gaza-Egypt border.

• Netanyahu discussed his new demands with Biden on Thursday at the White House and committed to sending, within two days, an updated proposal to the U.S. and Qatari and Egyptian mediators to deliver to Hamas, an Israeli official said.
• But even after almost three hours of talks, Biden and his advisers are unsure whether Netanyahu truly wants a deal or is playing for time to keep his government from collapsing, a source with direct knowledge told Axios.
• "President Biden expressed in his meeting with Netanyahu the need to close the remaining gaps, finalize the deal as soon as possible, bring the hostages home, and reach a durable end to the war in Gaza," the White House said in a statement.
• Netanyahu in a meeting with former President Trump on Friday in Mar-a-Lago said: "I hope we are going to have a deal. Time will tell. We are certainly eager to have one and we are working one it. There has been some movement because of our military pressure. I hope there will be sufficient movement to complete a deal."

What to watch: Burns will meet in Rome on Sunday with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani, Mossad director David Barnea and Egyptian spy chief Abbas Kamel, U.S. and Israeli officials said.

• The meeting isn't expected to include detailed negotiations over the remaining gaps, but will focus mainly on the strategy for the way forward, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
• Israeli negotiators were not hopeful that the meeting in Rome would lead to a breakthrough, and doubted that Biden's pressure on Netanyahu had convinced the prime minister to soften some of his new tough demands in the updated Israeli proposal.
• "Netanyahu wants a deal that is impossible to get. At the moment he isn't willing to move and therefore we might be headed for a crisis in the negotiations rather than a deal," an Israeli official said.
• The CIA declined to comment.

Editor's note: This story has been updated with Netanyahu's comments during his meeting on Friday with former President Trump.