Gaza Cease-Fire Talks Come Down to the Wire in Cairo

DUBAI—Negotiators were converging on Cairo in a high-stakes effort to clinch a cease-fire deal in Gaza and head off an Israeli offensive into Hamas’s final stronghold of Rafah.

Hamas and Qatari delegations arrived in Egypt on Saturday, joining Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns, who arrived a day earlier, Arab mediators said. Hamas’s military leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, weighed in on the proposed deal via Hamas representatives for the first time Friday, saying it was the closest one yet to the group’s demands but raising a number of caveats, the Arab mediators said.

Hamas is expected to present a counterproposal soon, the mediators said. The deal continues to be hung up on Hamas’s demand for a path to a permanent end to the fighting, while Israel insists on retaining the right to continue its campaign to destroy the group militarily.

Senior Hamas leader Ghazi Hamad said the group is still considering the proposal and weighing its response. Hamad declined to comment on Sinwar’s response to the proposed deal.

Hamas is looking for international guarantees that Israel will enter into negotiations over a path toward a sustainable period of calm, Arab mediators said.

Israel hasn’t said whether it would send a delegation to the talks. The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined to comment.

The U.S. is putting heavy pressure on Israel and Hamas to pause a conflict that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza and has spilled over into America’s domestic politics, sparking a wave of protests on college campuses that are threatening President Biden’s fragile bid for a second term.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken toured the region last week, meeting with Arab and Israeli officials to push forward a cease-fire and a framework for a broader resolution to the conflict set off when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and taking around 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

Israel has told mediators it will move ahead with a planned operation in Rafah if a deal isn’t reached soon, Egyptian officials said. Blinken said Friday that the U.S. wouldn’t support a full-scale military operation in Rafah and blamed Hamas for holding up a deal.

“The reality in this moment is the only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a cease-fire is Hamas,” Blinken said in Arizona on Friday. “Taking the cease-fire should be a no-brainer.”

Blinken called the latest Egyptian proposal a generous deal for Hamas, a U.S.-designated terror group.

Netanyahu also faces political pressures that narrow the path to a deal. The prime minister is facing low domestic approval ratings and relies upon hard-line coalition members who have threatened to pull his government apart if he stops the war before fully uprooting Hamas. Netanyahu has said Israel will send ground forces into Rafah regardless of whether a deal is signed, framing the operation as critical to destroying Hamas’s military capabilities.

The latest proposal is for a staged reduction of tensions accompanied by swaps of hostages held in Gaza with Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. The initial phase calls for up to 40 days of calm during which Hamas would release up to 33 Israeli hostages, and the parties have the possibility of negotiating a long-term cease-fire. The following phase would include at least a six-week cease-fire, during which Israel and Hamas would negotiate for the release of more hostages and an extended pause in fighting that could last up to a year.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a brief pause in their fighting in November, during which they exchanged hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners. Several subsequent attempts to strike a new deal have faltered, as the parties have remained apart on key points, including enabling displaced civilians to return to Gaza’s north and committing to a path to end the war.

Israel and Hamas have mostly agreed upon details of the hostage and prisoner swap envisioned under the proposal, Egyptian officials said.

Israel says the group’s last intact fighting formations are in Rafah, the one major city Israel has yet to invade in Gaza. Egyptian officials said, however, that Israeli officials are privately considering indefinitely postponing a Rafah invasion if a long-term cease-fire agreement is reached.

The U.S. has pushed back against Israeli plans to invade Rafah, amid concerns that it would bring more civilian casualties and that an operation would exacerbate an already difficult humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. The U.S. believes that Israel can achieve its objectives without a major operation in Rafah, and Blinken on Friday reiterated the U.S. view that Israeli plans to evacuate civilians ahead of the fighting are currently insufficient.

“Absent such a plan, we can’t support a major military operation going into Rafah, because the damage it would do is beyond what’s acceptable,” Blinken said.

Abeer Ayyoub contributed to this article.

Write to Summer Said at [email protected]