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Gaza ceasefire talks in Qatar last week narrowed the gap between US and Israeli positions, making any agreement with Hamas, whose members did not attend, less likely, sources told The National on Sunday.
Hamas on Sunday officially rejected the terms reached in Qatar, as mediators from the US, Egypt and Qatar were preparing for a new round of talks in Cairo this week and as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in the region to push the process forward.
On Sunday, Hamas said the terms reached in Qatar last week satisfied conditions set by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and included new ones Mr Netanyahu had submitted, demonstrating that he had walked back on points he had already agreed to.
“We hold Netanyahu fully responsible for foiling the efforts of the mediators and delaying reaching a deal,” Hamas said.
The region has been gripped by fear that the Gaza war could expand into a wider conflict since the assassination in Tehran of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and a senior Hezbollah commander in Beirut.
Iran has vowed to avenge Mr Haniyeh's death. Iranian officials, however, have suggested that Tehran might reconsider attacking Israel in retaliation if a ceasefire is reached in Gaza.
“What happened in Doha last week is basically that the representatives of the CIA and Israel's Mossad introduced changes and tweaks to the proposals announced by President Biden in late May,” a source told The National. “The final product is close to a new document.
“Looking at it differently, it represents the bridging of the gaps between the views and positions of Israel and the United States but which pays little or no heed to Hamas's basic demands.”
The sources' assessment was supported by a senior Hamas official on Saturday. The group's political bureau member Sami Abu Zuhri said signs of progress after the Doha talks were “an illusion”.
“We are not facing a deal or real negotiations, but rather the imposing of American diktats,” he told AFP.
Another top Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera TV English on Saturday that Israel wants the right to come back to the fight even if they agreed to a prisoner exchange. “They want to have the right to attack Gaza whenever they want,” he said.
However, Israel has offered some concessions, albeit minor, according to the sources.
The Israeli government, for example, is ready to free some of the high-profile Palestinians serving long jail sentences in its prisons, but has yet to say how many and whether it will send them into exile or leave them to return to their homes in the occupied Palestinian territories, the sources said.
It also wants all female Israeli soldiers held captive by Hamas as well as dual US-Israeli citizens released during the first, 42-day phase of the proposed deal, said the sources. If an agreement is reached, Hamas is likely to release the dual citizens in the first phase but not the soldiers.
The Israeli military says Hamas is keeping a total of 111 hostages, of whom as many as 40 are believed to have died in captivity. Hamas has not publicly said how many hostages it is holding.
It originally took about 240 hostages when its fighters attacked southern Israel on October 7. It also killed about 1,200 people, according to Israeli tallies. The group released about 100 hostages in late November as part of a week-long truce, the only pause in the war caused by the October attack.
'Booby-trapped' concessions
Israel, said the sources, did not budge on key issues in the latest talks. Its demands and concessions, they explained, are so intertwined that it is impossible for Hamas to judge them individually.
“Israel has essentially booby-trapped everything,” said another source.
Israel, for example, has agreed not to search displaced Palestinians returning to their homes in northern Gaza, but wants an international body to carry out vetting and ensure no militants return to that region. Hamas wants all those displaced to be able to return to their homes unconditionally.
Israel has also agreed to withdraw from the Palestinian side of Egypt's border crossing with Gaza as well as the strip that runs the entire length of that border known as the Philadelphi Corridor but on condition that its forces retain the right to return if they deem it necessary for security reasons.
Israel claims underground tunnels running between Egypt and Gaza are used to smuggle weapons and other hardware for Hamas. Egypt has categorically denied the charges.
Israel also wants a wall built along the length of the Egypt-Gaza border – about 12km – and fitted with advanced surveillance technology, including cameras and censors, to monitor movements.
Israel angered Egypt when it captured the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and the border strip earlier in the summer, fuelling tension between the two neighbours bound by a US-sponsored 1979 peace treaty.
Hamas, for its part, says it is ready to give up running the Gaza side of the border crossing and allow a Palestinian entity to replace it, provided it is not from the rival, occupied West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, said the sources.
It is also ready to give up nearly 20 years of rule in the territory, provided that a government of technocrats drawn from all Palestinian factions replace it and a date for legislative and presidential elections is set, said the sources.
Mr Netanyahu has repeatedly said the war will end only when Hamas is eradicated and all hostages still held by the group are freed. He has also refused to fully withdraw from Gaza and is insisting that Israel must play a security role in postwar Gaza.
Hamas, on the other hand, remains committed to demanding a full Israeli withdrawal and a permanent ceasefire in a war that has to date claimed the lives of about 40,100 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and displaced the vast majority of Gaza's 2.3 million residents.
