CIA Director Bill Burns has proposed a 28-day ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for Hamas releasing eight hostages and Israel freeing dozens of Palestinian prisoners, Axios reported on Monday, citing three Israeli officials.
The head of the U.S. intelligence agency advanced the plan during discussions on Sunday in Doha with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani and Mossad director David Barnea.
Negotiations for the release of the 101 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip resumed on Sunday after a nearly two-month lull.
Burns’s proposal does not address Hamas’s key demands of a full Israeli military withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war. Axios noted that an agreement was unlikely before the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday that Jerusalem would not agree to end the war against Hamas.
“Israel agrees to a temporary pause, but Hamas wants a pause that would open a process that would lead to irreversible Israeli steps. If neither side softens its position there isn’t going to be a deal,” a senior Israeli official told Axios.
The Prime Minister’s Office said on Monday that Barnea had returned to Israel from Doha, where “the sides discussed a new unified framework that integrates previous proposals and also takes into account the main issues and recent developments in the region.”
The statement continued: “The discussions between the mediators and Hamas will continue in the coming days in order to evaluate the feasibility of talks and the continued effort to advance a deal.”
According to Israeli officials, Barnea, al-Thani and Burns discussed the possibility of building on an Egyptian proposal confirmed publicly by Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi several hours before the Doha talks began.
Cairo’s proposal involves a two-day pause in fighting in exchange for the release of four hostages. It also includes the release of some Palestinian terrorists from Israeli jails and the delivery of humanitarian aid into Gaza. The idea is to “move the situation forward” as talks continue for a more permanent ceasefire, according to el-Sisi.
Netanyahu’s office on Monday night said that he had told a Likud Knesset faction that “Israel has not received a proposal for the release of four hostages in return for a 48-hour ceasefire in Gaza. If such a proposal had been raised, the prime minister would have accepted it immediately.”
Netanyahu reportedly told his fellow lawmakers that Hamas continues to make demands that Jerusalem “cannot meet,” adding that if these conditions are removed, “it will not be because they want to remove them” but because Hamas “simply wants room to breathe.”
“We are constantly working to try and get the hostages back,” Netanyahu said, and Israeli negotiators are “even working to find partial solutions. But it is not certain that opportunities will develop just because of [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar’s elimination.”
Israel was being presented with options “we will capitalize on,” he continued, “and we will bring back whoever we can, whenever we can.”
U.S. President Joe Biden on Monday called for an end to the war in Gaza after casting an early ballot in his home state of Delaware for the U.S presidential electoin.
“We need a ceasefire. This war should end,” Biden told reporters, saying of the ceasefire efforts that he would “get out of here, get on a secure line, and follow up on that.”