The talks come as Israel faces a stark dilemma: go ahead with invading Rafah in southern Gaza or hold off in favor of a potential cease-fire deal to free hostages in the enclave.
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Israel faces a stark dilemma as it weighs whether to invade Rafah.
France’s foreign minister is in Lebanon to discuss tensions between Hezbollah and Israel.
A ship carrying 400 tons of aid for Gaza has docked in Israel’s port of Ashdod.
Thousands rallied in Tel Aviv in support of hostages.
Israel faces a stark dilemma as it weighs a ground invasion of Rafah, Hamas’s last bastion in southern Gaza, according to Israeli officials and analysts.
Should it go ahead with a full-scale attack? Or should it suspend the operation in favor of a possible cease-fire deal with Hamas for the release of hostages still held in the enclave?
The prospect of an either-or decision to hold off on temporarily or even permanently invading Rafah comes as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faces intense pressure both abroad and at home. International diplomats are pushing to break a deadlock in cease-fire negotiations, and will meet this week in Saudi Arabia for talks, and hard-liners within Mr. Netanyahu’s government are insistent that the Rafah operation goes ahead soon.
Israel Katz, the Israeli foreign minister, made the equation clear this weekend.
“If there will be a deal, we will suspend the operation” in Rafah, he told Israel’s Channel 12, echoing what officials have been saying privately about the planned ground invasion of the city that has alarmed Israel’s allies. Mr. Katz is a member of Mr. Netanyahu’s security cabinet, but not the smaller war cabinet overseeing the campaign in Gaza. Both groups have met in recent days to discuss the issues.
And Benny Gantz, a member of the war cabinet, struck a similar tone on Sunday. While “entering Rafah is important for the long battle against Hamas,” he wrote on X, securing the release of the hostages “is urgent and much more important.”
The Israeli military has already started calling up reserve soldiers for a potential Rafah operation. An Israeli official said that Israel — under intense American pressure to avoid harm to the more than one million Gazans sheltering there — could start evacuating civilians by the end of the month.
But the official said the evacuation could take weeks and that Israel was also using the threat of an imminent military maneuver to press Hamas into a hostage deal. Another Israeli official said the government was conveying the message that Israel won’t wait much longer and that if Hamas wants to put off the Rafah operation it should start releasing hostages. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential matters.
Negotiations for a hostage deal, mediated by the United States, Qatar and Egypt, have stalled in recent weeks.
For Israel, analysts say, the Rafah calculus is complicated.
“Without going into Rafah, it seems like nothing has been accomplished,” said Nachman Shai, a former Israeli government minister and military spokesman.
After six months of war, Hamas’s leadership is still mostly intact, he noted, even if the majority of its battalions have been dismantled or degraded.
“But if Israel goes into Rafah, it can work either way,” Mr. Shai said. A military operation could pressure the Hamas leaders believed to be hiding there into releasing hostages still held in the enclave. Alternatively, it could cause them to call off any prospective deal, he said.
Egypt — which is particularly concerned about a potential Israeli invasion of Rafah, since the city borders its territory — has been consulting with Israel and is pushing a proposal for a two-phased hostage deal, one of the Israeli officials, who was familiar with the details of the talks, said on Sunday.
That proposal, according to the Israeli official, involves an initial “humanitarian” deal for Hamas to release the most vulnerable hostages — women, children, the physically and mentally ill and the elderly — in return for a temporary cease-fire and the release of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
After that initial phase, the official said, negotiations could then begin for a second phase that would see all the remaining hostages returned in exchange for an end of the war. In between the two phases, the official said, there would be an interregnum, the timing and purpose of which would be left vague.
That would allow Israel’s leaders to keep the option of a Rafah operation open, satisfying hard liners in Mr. Netanyahu’s government and the portion of the Israeli public that wants to see Hamas defeated before the war is declared over. Hamas, in turn, could view the interim period as a time to rally international guarantees for the end of the war.
There was no immediate comment from Hamas, Qatar or Egypt about the details of the proposal.
But Hamas and the Qatari mediators, for their part, appear to be increasingly trying to engage the Israeli public directly, perhaps to increase popular pressure on the government for a deal.
In recent days, Hamas released two propaganda videos featuring three of the hostages. And in rare interviews this weekend with two Israeli news media outlets, Haaretz and Kan, a spokesman for Qatar’s foreign ministry blamed both Israel and Hamas for the months of deadlock in hostage talks.
“We were hoping to see much more flexibility,” the spokesman, Majed al-Ansari, told Haaretz, “much more seriousness, much more commitment on both sides, all through the process, from day one.”— Isabel Kershner Reporting from Jerusalem