Egypt Pitches New Proposal for Hamas-Israel Cease-Fire

DUBAI—Egypt offered a new proposal for a truce between Israel and Hamas that would see the release of 20 Israeli hostages over an initial three-week cease-fire, in a bid to stave off an Israeli military offensive in the southern Gazan city of Rafah.

The proposal, formulated jointly with Israel, starts with a shorter initial time frame for pausing fighting than mediators previously put forward, but it still aims for a prolonged period of vaguely defined calm that would lead to the end of the war, according to Egyptian officials. It represents a last-ditch effort to revive negotiations that have dragged on for about five months without an agreement.

The continued fighting during that period has thrown the roughly two million Palestinians who live in Gaza into survival mode, and more than doubled the number of those killed since Israel’s invasion to around 34,400, according to Palestinian health officials. Death figures from the Palestinian side don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

In Israel, meanwhile, relatives of hostages seized during the Oct. 7 Hamas assault that precipitated the crisis are pressing the Israeli government to do more to find out whether or not their loved ones are still alive. In recent weeks they have stepped up street demonstrations aimed at getting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to prioritize the captives’ release.

Israeli hostages to be freed under the Egyptian proposal would include children, women—including female soldiers—and elderly people in need of urgent medical attention. They would be exchanged for around 500 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, Egyptian officials said, with the handover being followed by a 10-week cease-fire, during which the two sides would continue talking and at least 300,000 to 400,000 Palestinians currently seeking refuge in Rafah would be able to return to their homes in other parts of the strip.

Egyptian and Qatari mediators have made several stop-and-go attempts to get Israel and Hamas to agree on another cease-fire and hostage deal since a weeklong truce last November released more than 100 hostages. The Israeli government was resistant as it wanted to continue fighting Hamas, while the militant group was reluctant to relinquish its only leverage by releasing Israeli hostages.

A previous proposal put forth by American mediators said roughly 40 Israeli hostages should be released over the course of an initial six-week cease-fire, during which the two sides would also try to negotiate a way to end the war.

In response to the new proposal, Hamas’s political leadership said it would consult with its military wing and other factions in Gaza and get back to mediators in a few days, the Egyptian officials said. Hamas’s Doha-based politburo is nominally in charge of the group’s affairs around the world, including in Gaza, but final decisions are made by Yahya Sinwar, the group’s military leader in Gaza.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office declined to comment.

Before the new proposal, Hamas was still releasing videos of hostages in an effort to pressure the Israeli government. It recently showed two American citizens held captive, one of whom broke down in tears as he spoke. It isn’t clear when the videos were recorded, although one hostage said he had been held for 202 days. It has been 204 days since Oct. 7, when more than 240 hostages were taken from Israel and around 1,200 people there were killed.

Some 129 hostages taken on Oct. 7 remain in Gaza, although more than 30 are dead, according to Israel. Israeli and American officials privately estimate that the number dead could be much higher.

The Israeli military said in a briefing Saturday that it has been increasing the amount of humanitarian aid allowed into the strip, with the opening of an additional land crossing to northern Gaza and a port route. It said the number of aid trucks entering had reached more than 400 a day. Roughly 500 commercial trucks and 100 aid trucks were entering Gaza before the war.

About one million Palestinians have been forced to leave their homes and take shelter in Rafah, which Israel says is Hamas’s last stronghold. Some of them have migrated again in expectation of an Israeli takeover of the city.

Anat Peled contributed to this article.

Write to Summer Said at [email protected] and Chao Deng at [email protected]