Fresh hope for ceasefire as CIA boss tables new plan

Deal with Israel and Hamas would exchange hostages for prisoners and let tens of thousands of Palestinians return to northern Gaza.

A Palestinian woman assists a child playing on the ruins of a building destroyed by the Israeli bombardment in Gaza City on Monday. Picture: AFP

CIA director William Burns presented a new proposal in Cairo to help advance a deal between Israel and Hamas to end the six-month war in Gaza and release the remaining hostages.

Under the plan, presented on Sunday night, Hamas would release 40 of the more than 100 captives still held in Gaza in return for the release from Israeli prisons of 900 Palestinian prisoners – including 100 convicted terrorists – over the course of a six-week ceasefire in Gaza, Arab mediators said.

The US also proposed to allow Palestinian civilians to return without restrictions to northern Gaza from the south, where they have been displaced since the conflict began in October. Israel has been reluctant to allow that for fear Hamas militants would mix in with the civilian population and return to areas Israel says it has cleared. Israeli negotiators had previously offered to allow 60,000 Palestinians to return there.

Under the plan, those Palestinians allowed back would be granted free movement along two main north-south roads, with Israeli forces repositioned nearly 500m away from the routes.

The latest US proposal also calls for 500 truckloads of humanitarian aid to enter Gaza each day once the ceasefire begins. the UN has warned of imminent famine

The proposal calls for Hamas to deliver a list of the 40 hostages it would release, including five female soldiers, and compromise on which Palestinian prisoners could be released from Israeli prisons.

Overnight on Monday a Hamas source close to the negotiations said the group was reviewing the US proposal, and confirmed the basic elements of the plan regarding the return of civilians and the delivery of aid.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he had received a detailed report on the talks in Cairo. He reaffirmed his aims to release the hostages and vanquish Hamas, which he said required entering Rafah, the last city in southern Gaza the Israelis haven’t entered. US President Joe Biden has said he doesn’t want to see an Israeli operation there. “This will happen,” Mr Netanyahu said. “There is a date.”

Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed Al-Ansari told the BBC he was increasingly optimistic about reaching agreement on a ceasefire deal but cautioned “we are by no means at the last stretch of the talks”.

Diaa Rashwan, chairman of Egypt’s State Information Service, told Cairo-based broadcaster Alghad TV that a truce, if secured, could begin as soon as Wednesday, the start of the Muslim Eid al-Fitr holiday.

Ceasefire talks have been at an impasse for months, often showing signs of progress before stalling again. US and Arab negotiators have managed to secure only one pause in fighting, in November, which lasted a week. That deal was accompanied by an exchange of 100 hostages in Gaza for more than 300 Palestinian prisoners. Mediators took a new tack in January, pushing a phased diplomatic process that would start with a release of hostages and eventually lead to a withdrawal of Israeli forces and an end to the war in Gaza.

Israeli soldiers on the move in the Gaza Strip. Picture: IDF via AFP

One of the biggest obstacles to an agreement has been whether Israel would concede to Hamas’s demands to allow the unrestricted return of Gazans to the northern part of the enclave and the removal of Israeli troops from populated areas. Israel has been concerned those moves, if done in tandem, could allow Hamas to rebuild power in the Strip and survive the war. The Israeli military has already had to return to parts of northern Gaza it previously said it had cleared, including Al-Shifa Hospital, when militants regrouped there.

Hamas, a US-designated terrorist group, ignited the war with its October 7 attack that killed 1200 mostly civilian people in Israel and its abduction of more than 240 others.

Israel launched a bombing campaign of Gaza and sent in ground forces to destroy Hamas. More than 33,000 Palestinians have been killed since, mostly women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and fighters.

Israel is coming under mounting international pressure to halt the fighting. The White House also called for rapid steps by Israel to boost aid shipments, as well as for improved security co-ordination between the Israeli military and aid groups, particularly after an Israeli drone strike last week killed seven aid workers for US-based charity World Central Kitchen, including Australian Zomi Frankcom.

Cogat, the Israeli agency that coordinates humanitarian aid in Gaza, said 419 aid trucks were inspected and allowed into the enclave on Monday, the most to have entered in any one day since the war began. That followed Sunday’s high of 322 trucks. Before the war, Gaza received about 500 trucks of aid a day.

Mr Netanyahu faces domestic pressure to reach a deal from the families of more than 120 hostages – including many who are believed dead – still in captivity.

The Wall Street Journal