(JNS) U.S., Egyptian and Qatari leaders released a statement on Thursday calling jointly for an immediate conclusion to talks between Israel and Hamas about a ceasefire and hostage release agreement.
“It is time to bring immediate relief both to the long-suffering people of Gaza as well as the long-suffering hostages and their families,” the three stated. “The time has come to conclude the ceasefire and hostages and detainees release deal.” Detainees is a reference to captured terrorists.
The statement, signed by U.S. President Joe Biden, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, called on both sides to resume urgent talks next Thursday in either Doha or Cairo.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters on Thursday evening that the decision to issue a joint statement was the result of calls earlier in the week between Biden and the other two leaders.
“Both Qatar and Egypt believe this would be very useful, as they’re working on the Hamas side, and the Israelis are also very receptive to this,” the senior official said.
The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office stated almost immediately that it would send a negotiating delegation next Thursday. “Pursuant to the proposal by the U.S. and the mediators, Israel will—on Aug. 15—send the negotiations team to a place to be determined in order to finalize the details of the implementation of the framework agreement,” it said.
“A statement from three leaders is unusual, but we think it’s significant,” the senior U.S. official told reporters, adding that preparatory talks between the mediators and parties will take place in the coming days.
“There is no further time to waste nor excuses from any party for further delay,” per the statement from the three leaders. “It is time to release the hostages, begin the ceasefire and implement this agreement.” The various signatories have their own internal pressures for rushing a ceasefire deal through.
The statement referred to an Israeli proposal that Biden announced on May 31 which was to lead to a multi-phase deal to halt hostilities and release the hostages held in Gaza since Oct. 7, along with the release of an untold number of Arab terrorists.
The United Nations Security Council endorsed the deal. Since then, each side has accused the other of adding untenable conditions.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on maintaining a security presence along two key Gaza corridors to ensure Hamas’s remaining forces stay contained in the Rafah area. He has refused to agree to end the war once the hostages are free, including the return of dead hostages, instead saying that Israel must act to ensure Hamas that cannot retain power in Gaza.
Hamas has not agreed to even name the hostages they will release or guarantee that most of the hostages they release will even be alive.
Egypt has been repeatedly embarrassed with the exposure of massive Hamas smuggling and terror tunnels leading from their Sinai territory into Gaza, implying a level of complicity in October 7th, and certainly indicating that border security can not be left exclusively in their hands. Egypt has also forbidden Gazans to escape the war zone across their shared border in Rafiah, unless the individual Gazans trying to cross pay exorbitant exit fees in the thousands of dollars.
The US has an election coming up, and the Democrats believe that getting a ceasefire deal in place, no matter how bad it is for Israel, will help them in the elections.
The Biden administration has accused Hamas multiple times of failing to move forward on the proposal. A senior Biden administration official said weeks ago that a deal was closer than it has been in months and that a framework had been agreed upon, with some details of the actual implementation of the phased deal still up in the air.
“We do think there’s a way forward here. And I would just emphasize, it’s incumbent upon not just the Israeli side, but also the Hamas side,” the senior official said. “At the end of the day, this is a hostage negotiation. They’re holding hostages, and we’re going to need some things from the Israelis. We’re going to need some things from the Hamas side, through the Qataris and the Egyptians, to try to bring this to a resolution.”
The official said some four or five issues still must be hammered out but did not go into specifics. Both sides “have very firm positions” that “might be unbridgeable” as a whole, but need to be looked at individually, the official said.
“You treat each issue one by one, and with each one, there’s some trade space, and you can kind of find a way forward,” the senior official said, adding that “we’re fairly confident—and I base this on our consultations, not only with the Israelis but also Egyptians and Qataris—that there’s a way forward here, but also, more importantly, there needs to be a way forward here. We have lives on the line, particularly the hostages.”
The senior official did not mention the humanitarian situation in Gaza, which the White House has constantly emphasized when discussing the need for a ceasefire.
The joint statement includes an offer by the mediators, “if necessary,” to present “a final bridging proposal that resolves the remaining implementation issues in a manner that meets the expectations of all parties.”
The senior official told reporters this type of offer has previously been made on specific issues.
“I think what’s left here are really the implementation issues of the deal. It has to do with the sequencing of the exchange and some other issues that are complicated, but we believe there’s enough trade space,” the official said. “Having a proposal that’s unified between the three mediators can be quite powerful.”
Asked whether the joint statement was a roundabout way of giving Iran an off-ramp from its threatened attack of Israel in order to give a ceasefire in Gaza a chance, the senior official denied any connection.
But the official said that a major Iranian attack would put a ceasefire on the backburner—something that goes against the interests of Hamas, Iran’s proxy.
The official also disputed the view that Iran has a right to retaliate for last week’s assassination of Hamas political head Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran. Israel is widely thought to be responsible, though it has neither taken credit nor denied involvement.
“There’s been a kind of a sense out there that somehow Iran now has the right to attack Israel militarily. We completely reject that logic,” the senior official said. “I think the consequences of such a direct attack could be quite significant, including for Iran and Iran’s economy.”
Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich released the following [translated] statement in response to the tripartite statement to release terrorists and stop the war to destroy Hamas:
“You have to read it to believe it, and above all to understand the twisted and dangerous starting point of those who pressure us to stop the war and surrender. The “mediators” actually wrote in their announcement yesterday that “the time has come to conclude the cease-fire agreement in Gaza and the release of the abductees and prisoners” while creating an illusory symmetry between the Israeli abductees – men, women and children – who were abducted from their beds with terrible cruelty, and despicable terrorists who murdered Jews and are serving their sentence for it in prison?!
“So not really. The time has come to release the abductees a long time ago. The time has not really come to release the abominable terrorists who killed the Jews. And above all, the time has not really come for a surrender deal that would stop the war before the destruction of the Nazis of Hamas and Daesh and allow them to rehabilitate and return to murdering Jews again.
“The time has not come for a dangerous trap in which the “intermediaries” dictate a “formula” to us and impose a surrender agreement on us that will drain the many bloodshed we shed in the most just war we are waging, a “deal” that will leave Hezbollah on the fences of the residents of the north and reward terrorism and Iranian attacks against us, a deal That will play down Israel’s deterrence and its image in the Middle East, will present it as a weak patron state and alienate from it its friends in the moderate Arab countries that made peace agreements with it out of appreciation for its strength and independence.
“I call on the Prime Minister not to fall into this trap and not to agree to a shift, even the slightest, from the red lines he set just recently, and they are also very problematic.”
JewishPress.com News Desk contributed to this report.
