Exclusive-Israel seeks changes to Gaza truce plan, complicating talks, sources say

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By Jonathan Landay, Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan

WASHINGTON/CAIRO (Reuters) -Israel is seeking changes to a plan for a Gaza truce and the release of hostages by Hamas, complicating a final deal to halt nine months of combat that have devastated the enclave, according to a Western official, a Palestinian and two Egyptian sources.

Israel says that displaced Palestinians should be screened as they return to the enclave’s north when the ceasefire begins, retreating from an agreement to allow civilians who fled south to freely return home, the four sources told Reuters.

Israeli negotiators “want a vetting mechanism for civilian populations returning to the north of Gaza, where they fear these populations could support” Hamas fighters who remain entrenched there, said the Western official.

The Palestinian militant group rejected the new Israeli demand, according to the Palestinian and Egyptian sources, however a senior Israeli official said Hamas had not yet seen the latest proposals, which were expected to go out “in the coming hours”.

“The messages from Hamas are bizarre because we haven’t sent it yet, nobody has read it yet. Even the negotiators haven’t got it yet. They will read it before transferring it to Hamas for their reaction,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Egyptian sources said there was another sticking point over Israel’s demand to retain control of Gaza’s border with Egypt, which Cairo dismissed as outside a framework for a final deal accepted by the two sides.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office, the White House and Egypt’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Israel’s demands.

“Netanyahu is still stalling. There is no change in his stance so far,” said Hamas senior official Sami Abu Zuhri, who did not comment directly on Israel’s demands.

Word of the new sticking points came as U.S. President Joe Biden pressed for a ceasefire in talks in Washington on Thursday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on reaching a final deal.

“We are closer now than we’ve been before,” said White House national security spokesperson John Kirby, adding that gaps remained.

In a speech to the U.S. Congress on Wednesday, Netanyahu said that Israel was engaged “in intense efforts” to secure the release of hostages held in Gaza.

The sources who spoke to Reuters requested anonymity to discuss Israeli demands because of the delicacy of the on-off talks to finalise a truce and the release of hostages seized in the Hamas-led Oct. 7 assault on Israel that triggered the Gaza war.

The attackers killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 captives, according to Israeli tallies. Some 120 hostages are still being held, though Israel believes a third of them are dead.

Gaza health authorities say more than 39,000 Palestinians have been killed and most of Gaza’s 2.3 million people displaced by fighting that has destroyed much of the enclave and created a humanitarian disaster.

The United States, Qatar and Egypt have been mediating indirect talks between Israel and Hamas centered on a framework based on an Israeli offer and promoted by U.S. President Joe Biden, who has pressed the sides to resolve their remaining differences.

The framework calls for three phases, with the first seeing a six-week ceasefire and the release of women, elderly and wounded hostages in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

Talks on the second phase – which Biden calls “a permanent end to hostilities” – would continue in the first phase. Major reconstruction would begin in the third phase.

STICKING POINTS

U.S. officials have said for weeks that a deal was close but that hurdles remained.

Israeli officials raised their demand for a mechanism to vet civilians returning to Gaza’s north at the last negotiating session in Cairo earlier this month, said the Western and Egyptian sources. This “wasn’t expected,” the Western official said.

Israel is concerned not only about Hamas fighters slipping back north, but “operatives” among civilians who provide covert support to the group that governs Gaza, the official said.

The Israelis, the official and the three other sources said, also balked at withdrawing their forces from a nine-mile (14 km) strip of land along the border with Egypt referred to by Israel as the Philadelphia corridor.

The Israel Defense Forces seized the strip in May, saying that the strategic swath hosts smuggling tunnels through which Hamas has received weapons and other supplies. Egypt says it destroyed tunnel networks leading to Gaza years ago and created a buffer zone and border fortifications that prevent smuggling.

The last several days have seen efforts to “work around” that issue, either through an Israeli withdrawal “or there could be some understanding about how that is managed,” said the Western official, who did not elaborate.

A senior Biden administration official, briefing reporters on Wednesday ahead of Netanyahu’s meeting with the U.S. president, said they were in the final stages of securing a deal.

“There are some things we need from Hamas, and there are some things we need from the Israeli side. And I think you’ll see that play out here over the course of the coming week,” the official said.

Among things needed from Hamas were “the hostages who are going to come out,” the official added without elaborating.

Zuhri rejected the assertion, saying, “The U.S. administration is trying to cover up for Netanyahu’s undermining of the deal by saying there are things demanded from the two sides. This isn’t true.”

(Jonathan Landay reported from Washington and Nidal al-Mughrabi and Ahmed Mohamed Hassan from Cairo; Writing by Jonathan Landay; Editing by Don Durfee and Alexandra Zavis)