Israeli war cabinet meets to consider Egyptian proposal to end war in Gaza
The Egyptian proposal is the most comprehensive peace plan to be proposed to the two parties in the 11-week-old Gaza war.
Israel’s war cabinet met on Monday night to discuss a three-step plan put forward by Egypt for ending the war in Gaza, Israeli officials said.
The Egyptian proposal, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, is the most comprehensive peace plan to be proposed to the two parties in the 11-week-old Gaza war.
Some terms of the plan are expected to be strenuously resisted by both sides. The deal calls for an initial pause in fighting to allow for the release of Israeli hostages including children, women and elderly in need of urgent medical attention, in exchange for the release of around 140 Palestinian prisoners. It would be followed by the formation of a transitional government for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank made up of various Palestinian factions, including Hamas.
Israel’s war cabinet is meeting as pressure mounts to bring home the remaining 129 hostages, including 22 dead bodies, held by Hamas. It also comes as the death toll among Israeli soldiers rises.
Israeli minister Benny Gantz, a member of the three-member war cabinet, told a group of hostage families on Sunday night that there are several proposals in the works to release those held but signalled it wasn’t clear they were all being seriously considered, according to one of the attendees at the meeting.
“I can’t say there is progress yet,” Gantz said, according to the person at the meeting. “There are Egyptian proposals and there are other proposals flying around from all kinds of directions. I don’t even know which of them are even relevant.” The White House National Security Council declined to comment on the Egyptian proposal. As efforts to reach a hostage deal continue, a Biden administration official said many competing ideas are circulating so it would be a mistake to put too much stock in any one idea.
On a visit to troops in north Gaza on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave no signal that the war could end soon. “We’re not stopping, the war continues until the end,” he said.
Egypt shared the multiphased proposal late last week with Israel, Hamas, Qatar and the U.S. and has discussed parts of it with the Palestinian Authority, the semi-autonomous body that controls parts of the West Bank. Those discussions, according to Egyptian officials, included the creation of a transitional, technocratic government after a ceasefire deal is reached between Israel and Hamas.
The proposal by Egypt, which has emerged as a key negotiator between Israel and Hamas, will face significant hurdles on both sides.
Including Hamas in any transitional government would run up against Israel’s overarching war aim of eradicating Hamas, while the release of senior Palestinian prisoners would meet resistance from Israel’s right-wing government.
“This deal is really a victory for Hamas and it’s really difficult for me to see the Israelis agreeing to that,” said Gershon Baskin, who previously negotiated a hostage-release deal on Israel’s behalf.
Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, is unlikely to accept a deal that would see him relinquish power in Gaza and release Israeli hostages.
The war is also taking a heavy toll on Hamas and on the civilian population in Gaza, which is facing a monumental humanitarian crisis. More than 20,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have been killed, according to the Palestinian health officials. The figures don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.
On Monday, the Israeli military said fighting continued in the Hamas stronghold of Khan Younis, where it is in the process of establishing operational control over the city’s main routes. Israeli air strikes overnight killed dozens of Palestinians in central Gaza, health authorities in Gaza said.
The strikes caused damage to roads, hampering rescue efforts, and bodies still lay buried beneath the rubble, according to Palestinian health authorities and the Palestine Red Crescent Society, the main provider of emergency services.
Late Monday, the military said that soldiers found a Toyota Corolla vehicle with an Israeli license plate that belonged to the family of the late Israeli hostage Samer Talalka. Remnants of a rocket-propelled grenade as well as bloodstains, which were identified as belonging to another hostage, were found in the vehicle, the military said. Talalka and two other Israeli hostages were mistakenly shot by Israeli soldiers earlier this month after they emerged from a building in northern Gaza. Their deaths intensified pressure on Netanyahu’s government to take new steps to free the remaining hostages.
Late Sunday, the Israeli military said it had dismantled a large, underground tunnel complex that served as Hamas’s northern command centre. It said the complex had sheltered commanders directing the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, in which Israel says around 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed. The military said the tunnel network was also used to hold Israeli hostages. The bodies of five hostages were recovered from a tunnel tied to the northern command centre, the military said. Analysts say that this is an indicator that the tunnels were very important to Hamas.
The Egyptian proposal’s first phase calls for Israel and Hamas to agree to a roughly 10-day pause in fighting, during which all civilian hostages being held in Gaza would be released in exchange for Israel releasing around 140 Palestinian prisoners.
That phase also calls on Israel to withdraw its forces from residential communities in Gaza and allow the free movement of Palestinians across the strip. Israel would also pause drone surveillance and allow a significant increase in aid going into Gaza, especially to the northern part of the enclave, access to which has been restricted.
In the second and third phases, Israel and Hamas would negotiate the release of female Israeli soldiers, followed by male Israeli soldiers, in return for large numbers of Palestinian prisoners.
Those hostage-prisoner exchanges, along with the formation of the transitional, technocratic government, pose a thicket of negotiating challenges for both sides.
The transitional government plans would require rivals Hamas and Fatah to reconcile and work together. Once the transitional government took over, elections would be held in which Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who is 88, would be succeeded by a younger leader accepted by a majority of Palestinians.
While U.S. officials have previously urged a role for the Palestinian Authority, Netanyahu has baulked at the group’s involvement in post-war Gaza.
The Wall Street Journal
