Egyptian and Qatari officials are putting pressure on Hamas negotiators in Cairo to produce a list of hostages to be released as the first step in a phased ceasefire agreement with Israel, according to officials familiar with the talks.
Israel has not sent a delegation to the second day of talks in Cairo, demanding that Hamas present a list of 40 elderly, sick and female hostages who would be the first to be released as part of a truce that would initially last six weeks, beginning with the month of Ramadan, the officials say.
Hamas is meanwhile demanding that large-scale humanitarian aid should be allowed into Gaza and that Palestinians displaced from their homes in the north of the coastal strip should be allowed to return.
US officials have said that Israel had “more or less” accepted the six-week ceasefire deal, which John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, confirmed would involve a six-week truce and begin with the release of sick, elderly and female hostages.
Diplomatic sources in Washington said it was unclear what was stopping Hamas from producing a list identifying the first 40 hostages, noting that uncertainty about lists and identities had dogged the last successful hostage negotiations in November. They suggested it could reflect problems of communication between Hamas units inside and outside Gaza, that some hostages could be held by other groups including Palestinian Islamic Jihad, or that elements of Hamas were withholding the information as a way of obstructing a deal.
Washington does not believe the absence of an Israeli delegation was necessarily bad news for a ceasefire hopes, as Israeli negotiators could arrive within a couple of hours if agreement was reached on a list. Egypt and Qatar have assured Joe Biden’s administration that they were putting pressure on the Hamas representatives in Cairo to come up with the identities of the hostages involved.
The US is also stepping up pressure on Israel to open new land routes, as well as a new sea corridor, to allow a far greater flow of humanitarian aid into Gaza to prevent a famine that UN agencies have warned is imminent. The US vice-president, Kamala Harris, said on Sunday that Israel must “significantly increase the flow of aid”.
Biden used similar language in a tweet on Monday, saying: “The aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere near enough – and nowhere fast enough.” Unlike Harris, however, he did not name Israel as the responsible party.
At the White House, Kirby said truck deliveries into Gaza had been slowed by opposition from some members of Israel’s cabinet.
“Israel bears a responsibility here to do more,” he said.
Israel meanwhile stepped up its allegations against the UN relief agency for Palestinians (Unrwa), saying that Unrwa in Gaza had employed more than 450 “military operatives” from Hamas and other armed groups, and that Israel had shared this intelligence with the UN.
“Over 450 Unrwa employees are military operatives in terror groups in Gaza,” the Israeli military spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, said on Monday evening. “This is no mere coincidence. This is systematic.”
“We sent the information that I am sharing now, as well as further intelligence, to our international partners, including the UN,” he said.
Unrwa told Agence France Presse that some its staff had alleged they had been forced to make confessions under “torture and ill-treatment” while being interrogated over the October 7 attack.
“Unrwa is facing a deliberate and concerted campaign to undermine its operations, and ultimately end them,” the head of the organisation, Philippe Lazzarini, told the UN general assembly on Monday. “Part of this campaign involves inundating donors with misinformation designed to foster distrust and tarnish the reputation of the agency.”
The dismantling of Unrwa, with its 13,000 staff in Gaza, would mean the “entire humanitarian response in Gaza will crumble” Lazzarini said.
“The resulting human suffering will be immense,” he added.
A preliminary report by the UN office of internal oversight services (OIOS) into alleged Unrwa-Hamas links delivered to the secretary-general last week, said the investigators had received no evidence from Israel since the initial allegations in January that a dozen Unrwa employees had taken part in the 7 October Hamas attack. But the OIOS said it expected to receive information from Israel shortly.
Pramila Patten, the UN special envoy on sexual violence in conflict, reported on Monday that there were “reasonable grounds” to believe Hamas committed rape, “sexualised torture”, and other cruel and inhumane treatment of women during the 7 October attack. In her report, Patten, who visited Israel with a nine-person team in the first half of February, added there were also “reasonable grounds to believe that such violence may be ongoing”.
As the talks were under way in Cairo, a top Israeli minister, Benny Gantz, arrived in Washington for talks with Harris, the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, and the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to the undisguised irritation of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu invited his longstanding political rival into a coalition government after the 7 October Hamas attack on Israel, but that has done little to improve the tense relations between the two men.
US officials acknowledged that Gantz’s meetings in Washington, enhancing his own status as a would-be prime minister, was likely to inflame those tensions further. Netanyahu has yet to be invited to the White House since he returned to office at the end of 2022, at the head of the most rightwing coalition in Israeli history.
Gantz is said to have asked for the visit to Washington, rather than having been invited, but US officials said they welcomed an opportunity to talk to a member of the five-man Israeli war cabinet.
“For our part, we find him an important figure inside the Israeli government to engage with and, given the number of issues that we have currently that we are in discussion with the government of Israel about, including the need to surge humanitarian assistance in, for our purposes it’s an important meeting to have,” said Matthew Miller, the state department spokesperson.
The Biden administration is pushing for more crossing points into Gaza to be opened for humanitarian relief, especially Erez in the north, which is is seen by aid organisations as an urgent priority.
“The disparity in conditions in the north and south [of Gaza] is clear evidence that aid restrictions in the north are costing lives,” warned Adele Khodr, the regional director of the UN children’s relief organisation. Unicef says 16% of children in the north are acutely malnourished, compared with 5% in the south of the strip.
US officials said that organising a sea route was more complicated.
“There are a number of different ways to do it. We’re trying to find the most efficient way to get as much aid in as possible,” said Miller, but he declined to give details, citing the sensitivity of the arrangements.
Asked why the US did not restrict arms deliveries as a way of gaining leverage on Israel to allow greater humanitarian access, Miller replied: “We continue to support Israel’s campaign to ensure that the attacks of 7 October cannot be repeated. We have provided military assistance to Israel because it is consistent with that goal.”
The White House is seeking to help resolve rifts within the Israeli coalition, suggesting Netanyahu should seek a compromise over his coalition’s bitterly contested judicial overhaul, introduced early last year. After unprecedented street protests over the measures, in which demonstrators said they feared for Israel’s democratic future, the US president went even further, telling reporters in March 2023: “I hope he walks away from it.”
Netanyahu has faced significant pressure to step down over his ongoing trials for corruption charges, which he denies, as well as for instigating the judicial overhaul, which has been suspended since the outbreak of war.
It is widely believed in Israel that Netanyahu is slow-walking ceasefire talks, as well as talking up threats of an Israeli offensive on Rafah and Lebanon, because he believes he stands a better chance of beating the charges if he remains in office, and elections are unlikely while Israel is still at war.
