A team of mid-ranking Israeli officials will travel to Cairo in the coming hours to see if Hamas will agree to changes in the latest ceasefire offer, Reuters reported on 7 May, while confirming that Israel would not accept the current proposal.
“This delegation is made up of mid-level envoys. Were there a credible deal in the offing, the principals would be heading the delegation,” a senior Israeli official told Reuters, referring to the senior Mossad and Shin Bet officials leading the negotiations for Israel.
Late on Monday, Hamas announced it had accepted a ceasefire proposal delivered to them by Egyptian and Qatari mediators, causing the Israeli side to scramble to respond.
The Israeli delegation’s visit to Egypt comes hours after Israel began its long-awaited assault on Rafah, the city on the Gaza–Egypt border where more than one million displaced people have been sheltering from Israeli bombing elsewhere.
Israeli tanks took over the Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt early Tuesday while Israeli warplanes continued the bombing of the city that has been ongoing for weeks.
The Israeli official speaking with Reuters acknowledged that the invasion of Rafah was being used to pressure Hamas to accept a deal on Israel’s terms.
Reuters wrote that the official claimed Israel’s assault on Rafah had “pushed Hamas into hastily setting out its latest proposal.”
But the agreement accepted by Hamas was first proposed by Egyptian and Qatari mediators. It involved a halt to the fighting and exchange of some 130 Israeli captives in Gaza for hundreds of Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
The Israeli official speaking with Reuters claimed Israel would not accept the proposal because Hamas had stretched it to “unacceptable extremes.”
However, another official said Hamas had only made minor changes that did not affect the main parts of the proposal.
On 29 April, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the proposal was “extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel.”
“They have to decide, and they have to decide quickly … I’m hopeful that they will make the right decision, and we can have a fundamental change in the dynamic,” Blinken said at the time.
Hamas has long stated they want a permanent ceasefire that would end the war. In contrast, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said he wishes to destroy Hamas before the war can end.
Ministers in Netanyahu’s governing coalition have stated they wish to continue the war to annex Gaza, ethnically cleanse its population through “voluntary emigration,” and build Jewish settlements on the ruins of Gaza’s destroyed cities.
