Hamas rejects ‘new’ deal terms; Israeli team returns from Cairo

Hamas stood firm on its rejection of the latest proposals to close the gaps in a Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal as the Israeli negotiating team returned home from a day-long high-level summit in Cairo on the agreement led by CIA Director William Burns.

Israel insisted, however, that the talks were ongoing.

"We will not accept discussions about retractions from what we agreed to on July 2 or new conditions," Hamas official Osama Hamdan told the group's Al-Aqsa TV on Sunday.

Hamdan also said Hamas has handed to mediators its response to the latest proposal, saying US talk of an imminent deal is false.

At issue in particular has been Israel’s insistence that the IDF must remain in a critical buffer zone between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor, under which Hamas smuggled weapons for many years.

That issue did not appear to have been resolved during the day-long summit that included a high-level Israeli negotiating team led by the heads of Mossad and the Shin Bet, David Barnea, and Ronen Bar, as well as Major-Get (res) Nitzan Alon.

Qatar and Egypt with the hope of the US have been negotiating the deal.

Barnea’s team returned to Israel on Sunday night, while a lower level group remained in Cairo to continue with work with mediators on reducing the gaps between the positions held by Hamas and Israel, a source told The Jerusalem Post.

The proposed deal 

“Today's talks took place in a positive atmosphere and the teams entered another phase in negotiations” as part of the significant ongoing process to close the gaps, the source explained.

The high-level summit follows a week of preparatory work in Cairo and Doha, as well as a high-level summit in Qatar two weeks ago, 

It also comes in the aftermath of an Israeli preemptive strike against Hezbollah military targets in Lebanon to foil an attack by that Iranian proxy group against central Israel.

At issue is the fate of 109 remaining hostages of which 105 were seized on October 7. For of them have been in Gaza for a decade or slightly less. It’s estimated that 73 of the captives are still alive. 

The proposal on the table was first unveiled by US President Joe Biden on May 31. It was endorsed by the UN Security Council in June and both Israel and Hamas have agreed to it in principle, with Hamas referencing a July 2nd draft that it is bound to.

The three-phase deal would see the release of some 18-33 humanitarian hostages in the first phase.