Over the course of a few hours, the news from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room fast and furious.
Israel orders 100,000 civilians out of Rafah in prelude to invasion.
Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, potentially precluding invasion.
Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, possibly opening invasion.
The war-is-on-off-on-again developments on Monday left White House officials scrambling to track what was happening and what it all meant. At the end of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled less than originally met the eye, but reflected efforts to gain leverage at the negotiating table with a clear resolution not yet in sight.
In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire deal so much as make a counteroffer to the proposal on the table previously blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a sign of progress. At the same time, Israel’s strikes in Rafah evidently were not the start of the long-threatened major operation but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed four Israeli soldiers over the weekend — and along with the warning to civilians, a way to increase pressure on Hamas negotiators.
The flurry of actions underscored how fluid the situation in the region is as President Biden and his team try to broker a deal that they hope will ultimately end the war that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the region and provoked unrest on American college campuses. Over the last few days, the talks went from high hopes that a deal was close, to a fresh impasse that seemed to leave them on the verge of collapse, to a renewed initiative by Hamas to get them back on track.
“Biden is continuing all efforts to thread multiple needles at once,” said Mara Rudman, a former deputy Middle East special envoy under President Barack Obama who is now at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is still warning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah ground invasion is a terrible idea,” she said, while also “pressuring Hamas in every way possible to get hostages out and more humanitarian aid in.”
Mr. Biden called Mr. Netanyahu on Monday to fill him in on the American assessment of where the cease-fire talks stand and to again press the Israeli leader to hold off any full-fledged attack on Rafah. The president also hosted lunch at the White House with King Abdullah II of Jordan, who like other Arab leaders is eager to bring the war to an end.
The past two weeks have been as intense and suspenseful diplomatically as any since Hamas mounted a major terrorist attack on Israel on Oct. 7, killing an estimated 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. After months of stalemated talks, Israel came back on April 26 with a proposal that American officials believed changed the dynamics and offered a serious chance for agreement.
Under the first phase of the proposal, Israel would halt the war for 42 days and release hundreds of Palestinians held in its prisons while Hamas would release 33 hostages, specifically women, older men and the sick and wounded.
The number 33 was an increase from 18 proposed by Hamas but lower than the 40 originally demanded by Israel, in large part because Israeli officials came to understand that there were not more than 33 hostages who met the criteria, according to people informed about the discussions who insisted on anonymity to describe sensitive talks. Indeed, Hamas revealed to the Israelis on Monday that the 33 would include the remains of hostages who have died as well as those still living.
In addition, Israel would pull its forces out of populated areas of Gaza and permit Gazans to return to the northern part of the enclave once conditions were met; to that end, the cease-fire would enable a large increase in the flow of humanitarian aid. In trying to call Hamas’s bluff, the people informed on…
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