CIA director in talks with Israelis to restart Hamas hostage deal

The most senior US intelligence officials begin a new round of diplomacy aimed at resurrecting talks to release hostages held by Hamas.

CIA director William Burns has held talks with his Israeli counterpart, David Barnea. Picture: AFP

The most senior US intelligence and defence officials are beginning a new round of on-the-ground diplomacy aimed at resurrecting talks to release hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza and bringing Israel’s war there to a conclusion.

The talks gained more urgency following the killing on Friday by Israeli forces in Gaza of three hostages as they held up a white flag, an incident that has strengthened public calls in Israel to give priority to the release of hostages over other military objectives.

CIA director William Burns travelled to Warsaw on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) to meet with his Israeli counterpart, David Barnea, and the Qatari Prime Minister, according to US and Egyptian officials. The meetings are an effort to restart discussions over the hostages, a US official said.

Also on Monday, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin and General Charles Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, met Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the other members of his war cabinet, including Defence Minister Yoav Gallant and Benny Gantz, a former defence minister.

On another front, US and European officials were ferrying messages between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia that has been trading blows with the Israeli military along the countries’ shared borders. Those diplomatic efforts reflect another US aim – preventing the Israel-Hamas war from igniting a region-wide conflict.

Israel and its Western allies are pressing for an agreement that would push Hezbollah’s elite forces off the border while Israel removes hundreds of thousands of its own troops.

“If such a process will not be implemented diplomatically, we will not hesitate to act,” Mr Gallant said.

As the Biden administration focuses on resolving the complicated hostage negotiations and ending the bloodshed in Gaza, Washington is pushing for Israel to soon enter a lower-intensity phase of the Gaza conflict that will decrease the possibility of civilian casualties. More than 19,000 people have been killed in Gaza during the war, most of them women and children, according to authorities in the Palestinian enclave. The figures don’t distinguish between militants and civilians.

Mr Austin said in Tel Aviv on Monday that he wasn’t there to “dictate timelines or terms of the war”, and he reaffirmed that “our support to Israel’s right to defend itself is ironclad”.

The US Defence Secretary, speaking at a news conference after meeting with the Israeli war cabinet, added that they discussed ways Israel’s military could reduce harm to civilians in Gaza and how Israel could “transition from high-intensity operations to lower-intensity and more surgical operations”.

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan pressed Israeli leaders last week to make such a shift in operations, warning of the dangers of a protracted conflict, according to US officials.

In the negotiations to secure the release of hostages abducted in Hamas’s October 7 attacks, the so-called intelligence channel has been one of the most productive. More than 1200 people in Israel were killed in the attacks, including over 300 soldiers, and over 240 people were abducted, according to Israeli authorities.

Discussions in Doha, Qatar, last month involving Mr Burns of the CIA, Mr Barnea of Mossad and senior Qatari officials were part of negotiations that led to the release of hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel and a pause in Israel’s assault on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

During the week-long ceasefire, which ended on December 1, 105 hostages were released from Gaza while Israel freed 240 Palestinian prisoners. Israel said there were 129 hostages remaining in Gaza as of this weekend, a figure that includes the bodies of 21 hostages, both soldiers and civilians, whom Israel has concluded are no longer alive.

Mr Burns is a former US ambassador to Jordan who has served as the State Department’s top official for the Middle East. The Doha discussions included Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.

Osama Hamdan, a senior Hamas official in Beirut, said on Monday that Hamas had told Qatari and Egyptian mediators that it won’t resume hostage talks with Israel unless Israel ceases its war in Gaza.

“We are against any partial measures, and it is the occupation that hinders the process,” Hamdan said.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Sunday that Hamas’s demands for a full ceasefire wouldn’t dissuade the Israeli military from its war aim of completely dismantling the group, which the US designates as a terrorist organisation.

“Senior Hamas officials declared the return of hostages possible, only with an immediate end of the ground operation. It’s important for me to clarify – the IDF is determined to dismantle Hamas,” Rear Admiral Hagari, referring to the Israel Defence Forces.

Hamas has told negotiators that it is willing to release more hostages if aid to Gaza is doubled, in addition to an Israeli ceasefire that includes the withdrawal of its forces behind predetermined lines, Egyptian officials said.

Hamas also demanded the right to decide unilaterally on a list of hostages to be released and the freeing by Israel of some longtime Palestinian prisoners, including Marwan Barghouti, a popular leader in the Fatah ruling faction who is serving five life sentences for the murders of Israelis in the early 2000s.

With Hamas’s grip on Gaza in peril, the group is seeking a deal that will end the war and allow it to declare victory, said Ehud Yaari, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Israel, on the other hand, wants a deal that renews public support for continuing the war, he said.

“Israel wants an exchange to relieve pressure, and Hamas wants it to relieve all the pressure permanently” he said.

Complicating the talks, said Mr Yaari, is that Hamas isn’t sure how many hostages it has and how many it can collect to hand over. The November ceasefire ended when Hamas was unable to produce a list of hostages to be released next, US and Israeli officials said.

The entire negotiation process, Mr Yaari said, revolves around Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, who Israeli officials believe is hiding in tunnels beneath his hometown of Khan Younis, in southern Gaza.

“At the end of the day it’s this one guy in the bunker who has to make a decision,” Mr Yaari said.

Mr Barnea, the Israeli intelligence chief, met on Saturday in Oslo with Mr al-Thani, the Qatari Prime Minister, to discuss a restart of hostage talks. Mr Barnea said Israel was willing to look into freeing long-term Palestinian prisoners, including those convicted of killing Israelis, but wouldn’t agree on a ceasefire before negotiations start, according to Egyptian officials.

Washington has found itself increasingly isolated in international diplomacy on Gaza for its support for Israel’s military operation and rejection of calls for a ceasefire.

In an apparent shift in rhetoric, British Foreign Secretary David Cameron and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock called for a sustainable ceasefire in the conflict.

However, the two foreign ministers said for that to be achievable, Hamas must release all hostages and lay down its arms, which is in line with the US and Israeli positions. They said that without those steps, a cessation of hostilities was unlikely to succeed.

The US acted alone last week to veto a nonbinding resolution at the United Nations Security Council seeking an immediate ceasefire. The Security Council could vote as soon as Tuesday (Wednesday AEDT) on a new United Arab Emirates draft resolution that calls for an urgent cessation of hostilities and stresses the opening of land, air and sea access to Gaza to deliver humanitarian aid.

The Wall Street Journal