In the next days, CIA chief Bill Burns expressed his ambition to present Israel and Hamas negotiators with a “more detailed” ceasefire and hostage proposal. However, he emphasised that the success of this proposal would depend on their “political will.”
He gave a speech at the FT Weekend Festival during an unprecedented combined public event with Richard Moore of the UK’s MI6 foreign intelligence branch. The two emphasised the value of their nations’ intelligence cooperation at a time when the world order is in jeopardy, especially due to Russian aggression. Additionally, they supported Ukraine’s invasion of the Kursk area of Russia; Moore claimed that this altered the course of events, while Burns considered it a major tactical victory.
Currently, Burns said, the US is working with mediators in Egypt and Qatar to refine a framework proposed by Biden in May and “put it in a form, a good enough proposal” that both the Israeli and Hamas leaderships will see the value in moving ahead with it.
He stressed that in his experience with Middle East negotiations, “perfect is never on the menu,” adding that he could not say for sure that “we’re going to succeed in that,” nor how close the US and mediators might be to a deal right now.
“It is a fact that if you look at the written text, 90% of the paragraphs have been agreed to. But in any negotiation I’ve been involved in, the last 10% is the last 10% for a reason, because it’s the hardest part to do,” he said. A lot is at stake for Palestinians and Israelis, as well as strategically in the region, Burns said. But above all, what’s at stake is “in human terms,” he said, pointing to the hostages held in “hellish conditions” in Gaza and the suffering of Gaza residents amid a worsening humanitarian crisis.
Biden first announced the framework for a peace plan between Israel and Hamas on May 31 – to which he said Israel had agreed. The three-phase proposal paired the release of hostages with a “full and complete ceasefire.” The plan envisioned the withdrawal of Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops eastward from Gaza.
Since then, both sides have pointed to what they see as glaring holes in the framework, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that Israel’s forces will never leave the stretch along the Egypt-Gaza border known as the Philadelphi Corridor. The hostage release efforts gained new urgency earlier this month with the discovery of the bodies of six hostages in a tunnel beneath the southern Gaza city of Rafah, including the Israeli-American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Source: Here