Sources say Egypt was “deceived” by changing the terms of its ceasefire with Hamas.

CNN
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Egyptian intelligence secretly changed the terms of a cease-fire proposal that Israel had already signed earlier this month, paving the way for the eventual release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and a temporary end to fighting in Gaza. Three people reported that a potential agreement had been scrapped. People familiar with the discussion.

The ceasefire agreement that Hamas ultimately announced on May 6 was not one that Qatar or the United States believed it had submitted to Hamas for a possible final review, the officials said.

Details of the changes made by Egyptian intelligence have not been previously reported, but they have sparked a wave of anger and recriminations among U.S., Qatari and Israeli officials and stalled ceasefire talks.

“We were all fooled,” one source told CNN.

CIA Director Bill Burns, who has been spearheading U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire deal, was in the region when word arrived that Egypt had changed the terms of the deal. Mr. Burns was angry and embarrassed, the person said, and he thought it would appear that he was out of the loop or that he had not informed the Israelis of the changes.

Mr. Burns, who has a quiet and gentle demeanor, “almost blown a gasket,” a source said.

A CIA spokesperson declined to comment.

Three sources familiar with the matter told CNN that Ahmed Abdel Khalek, a senior Egyptian intelligence official who is a senior aide to Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel and has been Burns’s counterpart in leading Egypt’s mediation efforts in the ceasefire talks, was responsible for the change.

A source familiar with the negotiations said Abdel Khalek told Israel one thing and Hamas another. The sources said Hamas’ demands were further incorporated into the original framework, which Israel had tacitly agreed to in order to gain Hamas’ recognition. But the other mediators were not informed, and neither was Israel.

“Hamas was telling the people that ‘we will conclude a deal tomorrow,'” the first source said.

“All parties assumed that the Egyptian side submitted the same document that Israel had signed and that the other intermediaries, the United States and Qatar, were also aware of,” the official said.

Rather, the Egyptian side sought to blur the line between the original framework and Hamas’s response, the second source said.

The Egyptian government did not respond to requests for comment.

A deal was imminent

A Hamas document obtained by CNN outlined its version of the agreed framework, which included a permanent ceasefire and achieving “sustainable calm” to be reached in the second phase of a three-phase agreement. Israel has been reluctant to agree to discuss ending the war before Hamas is defeated and the remaining hostages are released.

Now, three weeks later, with ceasefire talks stalled, officials are questioning the motives of Egypt, which has long acted as a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas, particularly Hamas members in the Gaza Strip.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper on Tuesday whether he was concerned about Egypt’s involvement in future cease-fire talks, saying he was concerned about Egypt’s involvement in future cease-fire negotiations and said Israel would agree to terms that would allow Hamas to attack Israel again. said he was not prepared to agree. “I hope Egypt understands that we cannot agree to something like that.”

The changes come more than a week after Egyptian negotiators flew to Israel in late April to hammer out the final details of a framework for releasing Israeli hostages in exchange for a pause in fighting and the return of Palestinians. It was conducted. prisoners.

Negotiations had been going on for months since the last cessation of fighting collapsed in early December. Israel had largely agreed to go further than before, and there was a creeping sense of optimism that a deal was on the horizon. Israel appears to be willing to reduce its hostage intake, release more Palestinian prisoners, and allow Gazans from the southern enclave to return to the north without restriction.

U.S. officials emphasized how the framework was “extremely lenient on the Israeli side,” in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

After discovering the Egyptian’s freelance work, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani informed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad that Egypt had acted alone, two sources said. person told CNN.

Al-Thani and CIA Director Burns set about salvaging the proposal and rebalancing it with elements they knew Israel would require.

“It doesn’t make sense,” a senior Biden administration official said of why Egyptian intelligence would try to push something through without significant input from other agencies.

After the Egyptians returned from Israel and held talks with Hamas, it became clear that the group would not accept Israeli consent, one of the sources said. So Egyptian officials made significant changes to get Hamas’ consent.

The day before Hamas announced its agreement to the proposal on May 6, an Egyptian official told CNN that Egypt had received Hamas’ response and passed it on to the Israeli side.

“Several alternatives and scenarios have been proposed to overcome the main issues related to ending the war,” the official said.

The language of the agreement to end the war was perhaps the most vexing issue throughout the negotiations. But Prime Minister Netanyahu said what Hamas sent back was “far removed from Israel’s core demands.”

It didn’t take long for the discussion to stall.

Burns and other negotiators returned to Cairo for another round of indirect negotiations with Hamas. Israel agreed to send a team, as did Qatar, but neither sent senior officials, indicating that despite initial optimism, a deal is not as imminent as expected.

Two days after Hamas’s response on May 6, Burns returned to Washington and officials told CNN that negotiations had been “paused.”

Mediators had hoped that a pause in fighting would delay or prevent a serious Israeli invasion of Rafah. Israel’s military operation in Rafah is currently expanding, despite protests from the Biden administration that it threatens hundreds of thousands of civilians who have sought safety there.

Qatar is expected to play a bigger role in the next round if negotiations resume, a second person familiar with the negotiations said. A restart of negotiations does not seem imminent, but even if it were, Egypt would likely remain central given its inherent closeness to Hamas and Israel’s preference for Egypt over Qatar. be done.

Discussions are expected to continue to revolve around a broad framework that includes initial steps to free up to 33 Israeli hostages over at least six weeks. Hamas is pushing for the first release to include the dead bodies of the hostages, and also to move from the first phase to the second phase without a break. Both are positions that Israel has resisted.

U.S. officials say Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar doesn’t actually want a deal because he may think he’s winning and the more Palestinian suffering They claim that this is because the world will turn its attention to Israel. Netanyahu’s critics, including the families of Israeli hostages, have accused him of being more interested in removing Hamas from Gaza than bringing home his people.

This article has been updated with comments from Prime Minister Netanyahu.