After the Egyptians came back from Israel and conferred with Hamas,
it became clear the group wouldn’t go along with what Israel was
agreeing to, one of the sources said. So the Egyptian official made
significant changes to get Hamas to agree.The day before Hamas made their May 6 public announcement agreeing to
the proposal, an Egyptian source told CNN that Egypt had received
Hamas’ response and relayed it to the Israeli side.“Several alternatives and scenarios were proposed to overcome the main
point of contention related to ending the war,” said the source.The agreement’s language about ending the war has been perhaps the
thorniest issue throughout the negotiations. But what Hamas sent back,
Netanyahu said, “was very far from Israel’s core demands.”It wasn’t long before the discussions stalled.
Negotiators, including Burns, returned to Cairo for one more round of
indirect talks with Hamas. Israel agreed to send a team, as did Qatar,
but neither sent senior officials, an indication that despite earlier
optimism a deal would not be as imminent as hoped.Two days after Hamas’ response on May 6, Burns returned to Washington
and sources told CNN the talks were “paused.”Mediators had hoped that a pause in the fighting would delay or even
prevent a serious incursion into Rafah by Israel. Military operations
by Israel in Rafah are now expanding despite protest by the Biden
administration that they will threaten the hundreds of thousands of
civilians who had fled there for safety.If talks resume, it’s expected that the Qataris would play a bigger
role in the next round, the second source familiar with the
negotiations said. A re-launch of the negotiations does not appear
imminent but if it were to happen Egypt would still be expected to be
central given their essential proximity to Hamas, as well as Israel’s
preference of Egypt to Qatar.The discussions would still be expected to center on a broad framework
that would include an initial stage in which up to 33 Israeli hostages
would be released over at least 6 weeks. Hamas has been pushing to
include the bodies of dead hostages in the initial release and also
have the first phase flow into a second with no break. Both are
positions Israel has resisted.US officials have argued that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar doesn’t
actually want a deal since he may think he’s winning and the greater
the Palestinian suffering the more the world turns on Israel. Critics
of Netanyahu, including families of Israeli hostages, have accused him
of being more concerned with removing Hamas from Gaza than getting his
citizens home.
Why does Israel prefer Egypt as a mediator over Qatar? So Egypt was caught red-handed when it modified the clauses for the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel to get a deal through, but it is said that Israel would still prefer Egypt over Qatar as a mediating party. Is there a reason for this preference?
