A day after Israel confirmed that Hamas had killed six hostages in Gaza, the Israeli spy chief flew to Doha to hold talks on the floundering US-led diplomatic push to secure the release of the remaining captives and end the war in the strip.
The discussions on Monday between Mossad chief David Barnea and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, one of the main mediators, focused on the main hurdle to an agreement: Israel’s insistence that it retain troops on a strip of land along Gaza’s border with Egypt known as the Philadelphi corridor. And Barnea offered a glimmer of hope.
He stuck to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s position that Israel would not withdraw troops from the corridor during the first phase of the three-stage, US-backed deal that has been discussed for months by mediators. But he added that if an agreement survived an initial six-week truce, Israel would “be willing to withdraw troops from there”, said a diplomat briefed on the talks.
This was considered a positive sign, and “something mediators could work with”, the diplomat said.
The meeting between Barnea, Israel’s main negotiator, and the Qataris took place as a general strike in Israel raised public pressure on Netanyahu to agree a deal after the killings of the six hostages. The strike followed mass protests on Sunday night — the largest demonstrations since Hamas’s October 7 attack triggered the war — as hundreds of thousands of Israelis took to the streets to express their frustration with the prime minister and his far-right government.
Yet any hopes of a breakthrough were soon dashed — as they have been repeatedly over the past months. Later on Monday, Netanyahu held a lengthy press conference in which he vowed not to “surrender” by agreeing to a deal, dismissed the demands of the protesters and doubled down on the need to keep troops on the Philadelphi corridor — seemingly forever.
Using maps as props, Netanyahu described the strip of land, which Israel says Hamas uses to smuggle weapons through the border, as being of “cardinal importance both in bringing (home) the hostages and ensuring that Hamas will be crushed”.
“It is for this reason that Hamas is insisting that we not be there, and it is for this reason that I insist that we will be there,” he added.
Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a map of the Gaza Strip during a press conference on Monday © Ohad Zwigenberg/AFP/ Getty Images
His defiance in the face of mounting domestic and international pressure for a deal — and hours after Barnea had held talks in Doha — underscored the intractable challenges mediators face in getting Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement.
The diplomat briefed on the talks said there was no new round of negotiations scheduled — even as US officials have warned that the recent talks could be the last chance to get a deal inked.
Neither Hamas, nor Egypt, one of the other main mediators, is willing to accept a deal that leaves Israeli troops in the 14km border corridor.
After Netanyahu’s press conference, in which he implied that Egypt had turned a blind eye to Hamas’s arms smuggling, Cairo put out an usually stern condemnation of his comments, accusing him of “referring to Egypt, to distract Israeli public opinion, impede reaching a ceasefire and an exchange of hostages and prisoners”.
“Egypt holds responsible the Israeli government for the consequences of these statements which deepen the crisis and aim to justify incitement and hostile policies,” the Egyptian government said.
Qatar put out a statement expressing “solidarity” with Egypt, saying the “Israeli occupation’s approach based on an attempt to falsify facts and mislead world public opinion by repeating lies will ultimately lead to the demise of peace efforts and the expansion of violence in the region”.
A person familiar with the Egyptian government deliberations said weeks of talks between Cairo and Washington, with input from Israeli security officials, had been discussing a “monitoring mechanism” for the Egypt-Gaza frontier to convince Netanyahu that the border could be secured without the presence of Israeli forces.
That could include an underground high-tech barrier to be built on the Egyptian side of the corridor, similar to the multibillion-dollar fortification Israel built several years ago around Gaza in a bid to interdict tunnels. Additional sensors to track tunnel construction would also be deployed, as well as elite Egyptian troops tasked with halting above-ground smuggling, the person said.
The US would likely have to fund the scheme, the person said, adding that Cairo has intimated that “the only guarantee against weapons smuggling is Egyptian and Israeli co-operation”.
However, the diplomat said the details of how the monitoring mechanism would work were still not clear. And it could only succeed if Netanyahu agreed to withdraw Israeli troops.
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Netanyahu said on Wednesday that Israel could not agree to a permanent ceasefire if the Philadelphi corridor was “perforated”.
“Somebody has to be there. I don’t care, bring me anyone who will actually show us, not on paper, not in words, not in a slide, but on the ground, day after day, week after week, month after month, that they can actually prevent the recurrence of what happened there before,” he told reporters. “We’re open to consider it. But I don’t see that happening.”
Even before his Monday night speech, the US, which has largely put the onus on Hamas to agree a deal, expressed its frustration with the Israeli prime minister’s intransigence. When asked if Netanyahu was doing enough to enable a deal, President Joe Biden gave a blunt “no”.
Mediators have been using the outline of a three-phase deal Biden endorsed on May 31, which calls for the release of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners, the redeployment of Israeli troops from Gaza’s populated areas in the first phase, and their complete withdrawal from the strip in the second stage.
The US presented what it called a “bridging proposal” to Israel last month, the details of which have not been made public. Hamas insists an earlier version of the plan endorsed by Biden be implemented, while Netanyahu’s insistence on keeping troops in the Philadelphi corridor has deadlocked the process.
“Mediators are working hard on trying to find a solution, but they are in a tough place, because if you allow Israel to stay in the Philadelphi corridor, Egypt and Hamas won’t agree to it,” the diplomat said. “If you push Israel to leave, Netanyahu will never agree to it.”
Israeli opposition leaders and, in private, security officials accuse Netanyahu of wilfully undermining any possible deal, especially at key moments where progress was evident, in a bid to ensure his political survival.
Far-right ministers who are key to Netanyahu’s ruling coalition have threatened to topple the government if he agrees to what they describe as a “reckless” deal.
On Tuesday, opposition politician Benny Gantz, who was part of the war cabinet before he resigned in June, said the government needed to prioritise the hostages’ release even at the cost of withdrawing from Philadelphi.
“The hostages must be returned, even at a heavy price,” said Gantz, a former military chief. “Netanyahu is dealing with political survival, and harming the strategic relations with the United States.”
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