Egypt Sends Negotiators to Israel, Fearing Time Is Running Out for Rafah

Egypt’s president dispatched his intelligence chief to Israel on Friday in a last-ditch effort to revive talks toward a cease-fire in Gaza that would also free Israeli hostages and hold off a planned Israeli military offensive against Hamas in the city of Rafah.

Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s chief of general intelligence, is leading a delegation that was set to meet with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, and an array of other top Israeli officials.

The talks are a last-minute attempt to negotiate a stop to the fighting in Gaza as Israel prepares to launch an assault on Rafah, a city on the Gaza Strip’s border with Egypt, where more than a million Palestinian civilians are sheltering in the vicinity. Israeli officials have said in recent days that they are moving forward with the offensive soon, without specifying the timing of the attack.

Egyptian officials familiar with the negotiations say the talks toward a hostage deal have little chance of success, but hope to use the meetings to buy time for the U.S. and regional powers to pressure Israel to pause its plans to attack Rafah.

Western governments, the United Nations and international humanitarian agencies have warned that a military operation in Rafah could be catastrophic for civilians, many of whom are crowded into tent camps, schools and other makeshift shelters after fleeing their homes in other parts of Gaza during the war. The Rafah border crossing with Egypt is also a key entry point for humanitarian aid into the besieged strip.

Israel says it needs to proceed with the operation to stamp out key sections of Hamas’s military wing. The militant group has managed to survive after nearly seven months of war following its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which authorities say killed some 1,200 people. Israel’s resulting attack on Gaza has left much of the strip in ruins and killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to local health officials whose numbers don’t distinguish between combatants and civilians.

The Egyptian officials visiting Israel are pursuing negotiations on two tracks. The first one involves working with Israeli officials to generate a new proposal that could potentially get Hamas to reengage in negotiations toward a deal that would free at least some of the Israeli hostages the group has held since Oct. 7, in exchange for a cease-fire in Gaza and the release of Palestinian prisoners. The second one involves pressuring Israel to pull back from its plan to attack Rafah, Egyptian officials said.

The cease-fire negotiations, which have dragged on for months since the end of a weeklong truce in November, have been deadlocked for weeks with both sides refusing to compromise on key issues. The U.S., Egypt and Qatar are mediating in the indirect negotiations.

The main stumbling block in the negotiations now is Hamas’s demand that any deal include a credible path to a permanent cease-fire, rather than a temporary pause in the fighting, according to Egyptian and other officials familiar with the negotiations.

Hamas rejected a recent U.S. plan, handed to negotiators in Cairo earlier this month, that called for a permanent state of “calm” in Gaza, arguing that the proposal served Israel’s interests and didn’t include guarantees for a permanent cease-fire. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other top leaders in Israel favor a temporary cease-fire that would allow the country to resume its war against the militant group after a number of weeks.

Arab officials mediating in the talks say both sides have refused to compromise on critical points in the negotiations. During the talks in Cairo earlier this month, Israel also refused to agree to allow displaced Palestinians to return to northern Gaza, and wouldn’t compromise on releasing senior Palestinian prisoners demanded by Hamas. The families of Israeli hostages have also criticized Netanyahu specifically for a lack of flexibility in the negotiations. Netanyahu has blamed Hamas for the deadlock in the talks, calling the group’s demands “delusional.”

In Israel, Kamel is also meeting Israel’s national-security adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi; the head of Israel’s internal security service, Ronen Bar; and military chief of staff Herzi Halevi.

Egypt is deeply concerned about a possible Israeli military offensive in Rafah, which it fears could push some Palestinians to attempt to flee over the border into Egypt. The Egyptian government is opposed to a mass exodus of Palestinians on security grounds and argues that any displacement of Gazans into Egypt could become permanent.

Egyptian officials also say that they have warned the U.S. and Middle Eastern countries that a Rafah operation could trigger another round of escalation in the region, ramping up tensions between Israel and Iran and its network of militant allies. Israel and Iran engaged in an unprecedented exchange of direct fire earlier this month following a suspected Israeli strike that killed a top Iranian general in a diplomatic building in Damascus.

Write to Jared Malsin at [email protected] and Summer Said at [email protected]