Officials met in Doha, Qatar over the weekend to restart ceasefire negotiations that could, if Israel and Hamas were to agree, end the devastating war between them. But it’s unclear whether the death of the Yahya Sinwar will mark a change in the group’s position.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi said on Sunday they came up with a new proposal that would be a two-day ceasefire, during which Hamas would release four Israeli hostages, while previous proposals that included a longer pause have repeatedly failed. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said on Monday the prime minister had not received the Egyptian proposal but if they had, Netanyahu “would have accepted it immediately.”
The Israeli delegation is led by Mossad Director David Barnea, and he met with CIA Director William Burns, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller declined during Monday’s press briefing to talk about the Egyptian proposal.
“I don’t want to speak to any specific proposals from the podium. I don’t think it’s helpful to get into them publicly,” he explained. “We’ve always made clear that we are open to different types of arrangements, and we want to look at different types of arrangements and see if there are any possible but ultimately, we have two major overriding goals here: one is to bring the hostages home, and the other is to end the war.”
Israeli forces killed Sinwar, who is considered to be the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attack in southern Israel, earlier this month in what was a major symbolic victory for Israel.
Sinwar “wasn’t willing to negotiate any further,” Miller said, which is why his assassination provides a window for negotiators to work with, but it’s unknown whether Hamas will be more amenable to a deal without Sinwar at the helm.
“Hamas has a process it goes through to select new leadership,” Miller added. “It appears to be going through that process now. We obviously don’t have a great deal of insight to Hamas internal decision making, but based on our conversations in the region, our understanding is that Hamas is being run by a council now, and at some point will go through a process to select a new leader, and I think the results over the next few weeks will determine whether there has been a change in their posture.”
His expectation that it will take a “few weeks” to determine whether Hamas’s stance has changed, presents a timeline for how long these negotiations could take, which would likely mean it not happening before next week’s presidential election.
Hamas is still holding approximately 100 Israeli hostages whom they have detained for more than a year now. Dozens of the hostages have been killed, though it’s unclear exactly how many are still alive.
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Israeli forces have rescued a handful of hostages and tragically killed a couple of them unintentionally. Hamas has not willingly released a hostage since the two sides executed a week-long ceasefire last November when the conflict was in its infancy.
Israel’s military is continuing operations against Hamas as the negotiations are restarting. They are currently reengaging Hamas in northern Gaza where they have had to repeatedly had to go back to in order to prevent the terrorist group from reconstituting.