Mossad director David Barnea met in Rome on Sunday with top negotiators from the US, Egypt, and Qatar for talks on the updated proposal for a hostage release deal with Hamas that Israel relayed to the White House on Saturday.
Barnea’s meeting came as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived back in Israel from the US and convened his security cabinet at the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv in the wake of a deadly Hezbollah rocket strike in the Golan Heights.
Twelve children and teens were killed when a rocket hit a soccer field in the northern Druze town of Majdal Shams on Saturday afternoon. The IDF has said that the rocket was an Iranian-made Falaq-1 with a warhead of over 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of explosives.
Netanyahu — who was in the US for an address to Congress and meetings with US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, and GOP candidate Donald Trump — moved his return flight up by several hours in order to hold the security cabinet meeting.
The escalation in the north was expected to dominate the meeting and it was unclear if the ministers would also discuss the hostage deal and Barnea’s talks.
Barnea flew out of Israel on Sunday morning for his meeting with CIA chief William Burns, Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani.
The four negotiators were expected to discuss the updated proposal for a hostage release deal Israel relayed to the White House on Saturday, which includes tougher demands by Netanyahu.
Sources cited by Hebrew media warned that Netanyahu’s latest demands could thwart the negotiations.
In response to the criticism, a member of Netanyahu’s delegation told Channel 12 news on Sunday that “the pressure from the Israeli news outlets goes in one direction, and is directed only at the prime minister. This makes a deal less likely because it plants false hope in Hamas. The more unity there is in our positions and those of the Americans, the greater the chances are to free hostages.”
The more unity there is in our positions and those of the Americans, the greater the chances are to free hostages.
The Prime Minister’s Office declined to respond to requests by The Times of Israel for comment on the public criticism of the prime minister’s recent demands.
According to the outlet, the proposal demands an inspection mechanism be put in place to ensure Hamas combatants are not able to move to the Strip’s north; sees Israel remaining on the Gaza-Egypt border known as the Phildalphi Corridor during the first phase of the deal; and insists on Israel receiving a list of all living hostages Hamas will release as part of the deal.
The report quoted a top Israeli official as expressing doubt that the proposal would even make it past the Arab mediators. “It’s doubtful they will pass the proposal on to Hamas given the substantive change to it,” said the official.
Walla news also cited unnamed officials in the Israeli negotiating team and in the security establishment as saying Hamas was unlikely to agree to the new demands and that this could lead to a crisis in talks.
An official in the Israeli negotiating team was quoted by the Haaretz newspaper as saying that the demand for an inspection mechanism to prevent the return of gunmen to the north was “a death blow to the negotiations.”
“The security establishment will be able to deal with the security challenges without the mechanism,” said the source, adding that Netanyahu was “thoughtlessly risking hostages’ lives.”
An unidentified Palestinian official told Kan news that the Israeli offer was designed to “create roadblocks in the talks,” and was effectively Israel’s way of saying no without saying no.
A senior Palestinian official quoted in the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Mayadeen news outlet Saturday indicated that Hamas considers any new proposal dead on arrival.
Israel’s new conditions track with three of the “non-negotiables” Netanyahu listed in a July 7 statement: maximizing the number of living hostages to be released, preventing the return of gunmen northward inside Gaza, and stopping Hamas’s arms smuggling from Egypt.
Channel 12 reported on Wednesday that Netanyahu was trying to secure a signed, written commitment from Biden that the US would uphold Israel’s right to resume fighting until its war aims are reached — the fourth of Netanyahu’s “non-negotiables.”
Israel’s latest offer was relayed to the White House as Netanyahu was wrapping up a visit to the US, where he had been since Monday.
Biden and Netanyahu met with American hostages’ relatives on Thursday. At the meeting, the US president said: “I am telling you as a Biden that I am all in, and I am going to do all within my power to make it happen.”
Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, said after the meeting that “we feel probably more optimistic than we have since the first round of releases in late November.”
The talks have failed to secure a truce in Gaza and release of hostages there since the weeklong ceasefire in November, which saw Hamas release 105 captives in return for 240 Palestinian prisoners. The current round of talks is based on Israel’s May 27 proposal, outlined by Biden in a May 31 speech.
It is believed that 111 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7 attack remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the Israel Defense Force.
The shock assault saw thousands of Hamas-led terrorists storm southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, sparking the war in Gaza.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 39,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 15,000 combatants in battle and some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel during the October 7 attack.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.