Israel sends Gaza hostage and ceasefire proposal to U.S.
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Demonstrators and relatives of hostages taken by Hamas protest on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., on July 23, 2024. Photo: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Israel delivered to the U.S. on Saturday its updated proposal for the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, according to an Israeli senior official and two other sources with knowledge of the issue.
Why it matters: The negotiations over the Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal are at a critical juncture.
- 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.
Driving the news: The proposal was delivered ahead of a meeting on Sunday in Rome between Mossad director David Barnea, CIA director Bill Burns, the Prime Minister of Qatar Mohammed Bin Abdul Rahman al-Thani and the head of Egyptian intelligence Abbas Kamel to discuss the hostage deal.
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin 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.
- An Israeli official said the updated Israeli proposal includes a mention of the establishment of a foreign mechanism to monitor and prevent the transfer of militanta and weapons from the south of the Gaza Strip to the north, but without detailing how this mechanism would operate or who would be responsible for it.
- The Israeli official noted the updated proposal also includes changes in the locations where the redeployment of IDF forces will take place in the Gaza Strip in the first phase of the deal as well as a determination that the IDF forces will remain in the Philadelphi corridor on the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt during the first phase's implementation.
What they are saying: Israeli negotiators were not hopeful on Friday 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.
Go deeper: Families' hopes rise for Gaza hostage-ceasefire deal after Biden, Netanyahu meet
