U.S. Presses Qatar on Hamas as Gaza Talks Come Down to the Wire

DUBAI—The U.S. has asked the Persian Gulf state of Qatar to expel Hamas’s political leadership if the group doesn’t agree to a Gaza cease-fire deal in high-stakes talks under way in Cairo, an official from the region said.

Qatar, which has hosted the group’s political wing since 2012, is ready to carry out the request when asked, the official said. The State Department didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The move is a sign of the heavy pressure the U.S. is putting on Hamas and Israel to pause a conflict that Palestinian health officials say has killed more than 34,000 people in Gaza. Concerns about the heavy toll on civilians has spilled over into U.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 Middle East last week, meeting with Arab and Israeli officials to push forward a cease-fire and a framework for a broader resolution to the conflict. The war was set off when Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people—mostly civilians—and taking around 240 hostage, according to Israeli officials.

“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.”

Hamas is aware of the growing pressure on Qatar to expel its leadership and has alternatives for its political base, an official with the group said Saturday. The U.S. request for Qatar to expel Hamas if it continues to fail to reach a cease-fire deal with Israel was reported earlier by the Washington Post.

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 a 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.

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

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.

Israeli war cabinet minister Benny Gantz on Saturday said Israel has yet to receive an official Hamas response. Israel has yet to send a delegation to the talks, an Israeli official said.

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.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces domestic 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.

In a sign of some progress, Hamas now says it could go ahead with the initial swap of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners without discussion of a permanent cease-fire in that stage, some of the mediators said.

But the group still wants a guarantee that the discussion would come in the subsequent phase of the deal, and progress remains short of an agreement, the mediators said.

Hamas didn’t respond to requests for comment on those discussions.

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.

Hamas’s political leadership has been scouting for alternatives to its current base in recent weeks, Arab officials have said, as pressure built on Qatar and negotiations faltered.

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.

Adam Chamseddine and Abeer Ayyoub contributed to this article.

Write to Summer Said at [email protected] and Gordon Lubold at [email protected]