Mediators plan to move ahead with a summit next week pursuing a cease-fire agreement in Gaza, Israeli officials said on Friday, after Israeli security chiefs sought to obtain Egyptian consent for a postwar Israeli presence along Gaza’s border with Egypt.

The issue of Israeli troops on the border has emerged as a particularly contentious dispute in the overall negotiations for a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas, talks that mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the United States have struggled for months to keep alive.

Hamas has repeatedly rejected the idea of an Israeli presence in the border area, saying that any deal to stop the war must involve Israel’s complete withdrawal from Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel has argued that the tunnels in the area, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, have served as a major conduit for smuggling weapons into Gaza, and that abandoning them would allow Hamas to quickly rearm.

Egypt, as a neighboring country and a mediator in the truce talks with a significant stake in the war’s outcome, is also key to reaching a truce agreement. The government has said that keeping Israeli troops at its Gaza border could raise national security concerns and potentially threaten Egyptian-Israeli relations. Egypt also says it has already taken aggressive action to destroy tunnels and stop smuggling.

Faced with an apparent impasse, diplomats have tried to push toward some kind of agreement, veering for weeks between tentative optimism and deadlock while saying little about the talks in public. Both Israeli and Hamas officials have blamed each other for the failure to reach a deal, which also aims to free more than 100 hostages held in Gaza.

President Biden on Friday afternoon spoke by telephone with Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani, and made a separate call to President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt, as he continued his effort to find a formula that would lead to a cease-fire. Earlier in the week he called the Israeli prime minister.