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The United States, Egypt and Qatar said on Friday that cease-fire talks aimed at ending the war in Gaza would continue next week in Cairo, as the mediators raced to make progress toward a truce they hoped would help avert a wider regional conflagration.
The announcement came after top American, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari officials ended two days of talks in Doha, Qatar, to try to bridge remaining disagreements between Israel and Hamas. U.S. and regional officials hope that movement in the negotiations would blunt or stop a widely anticipated Iranian-led retaliation for the assassination of senior leaders of Hamas and Hezbollah, both backed by Iran.
During the talks, the United States said it had presented a proposal — backed by Egypt and Qatar, the main mediators — that narrowed the gaps between Israel and Hamas on reaching a cease-fire. Details of the proposal were not immediately known. In a joint statement, all three governments characterized the meetings as “serious, constructive and conducted in a positive atmosphere.”
“This proposal builds on areas of agreement over the past week and bridges remaining gaps in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal,” the three countries said. “Working teams will continue technical work over the coming days on the details of implementation.”
President Biden, speaking to reporters at the White House on Friday morning, said, “We’re much, much closer than we were three days ago.”
“I don’t want to jinx anything,” he added, saying that “we’re not there yet” but “we’re close.”
Senior officials will again convene before the end of next week in Cairo in the hopes of reaching an agreement based on the terms laid out in Qatar, the statement said. In the meantime, lower-ranking officials would continue to hammer out technical details on how the cease-fire proposal would be implemented, they added.
There was no immediate comment from Israeli or Hamas officials on whether they will participate in the talks in Cairo.
Hamas officials, who have accused the Israeli government of bargaining in bad faith, did not participate directly in the talks in Doha but have signaled a willingness to consider new proposals from the Israelis.
The talks have taken on heightened significance as the region braces for an expected retaliation against Israel from Iran and Hezbollah after the recent assassinations of Ismail Haniyeh, the political leader of Hamas, in Tehran, and Fuad Shukr, a top Hezbollah military commander, in a Beirut suburb. The United States has deployed additional combat aircraft and warships to the region, and dispatched a guided-missile submarine, underscoring the gravity of the likely repercussions of any attack on Israel.
A cease-fire deal for Gaza, according to U.S. and Middle Eastern diplomats, could help persuade Iran to rein in its response and reduce the likelihood of a broader conflict.
International pressure has been rising for months for some kind of deal to end the suffering in Gaza and allow for the release of hostages. The Gazan Health Ministry reported on Thursday that the Palestinian death toll in the war had surpassed 40,000. The ministry’s figures do not distinguish between combatants and civilians. On the same day, the Israeli military said that it had killed more than 17,000 combatants over the course of the war.
Key Developments
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is expected to arrive in Israel next week, the Israeli prime minister’s office said in a statement. Mr. Blinken is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, it said. The visit comes as U.S. diplomats have fanned out across the region in a race to try to seal a cease-fire deal. Earlier this month, Mr. Blinken told reporters that American officials were engaged in diplomacy around the clock to try to reduce tensions after the assassinations last month of key leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas, armed groups backed by Iran.
Israel’s foreign minister called on allies to join in attacking Iran if Tehran conducts a retaliatory strike. “The right way to deter Iran and prevent war is by announcing that if Iran attacks, they will stand with Israel not only in defense but also in striking targets in Iran,” the foreign minister, Israel Katz, said in a statement on Friday after meeting with his counterparts, David Lammy of Britain and Stéphane Séjourné of France. The French and British diplomats did not immediately comment on the statement.
The Israeli military called for more evacuations from the “humanitarian zone” it has designated for civilians in southern Gaza, distributing fliers calling for people to leave parts of Khan Younis and Deir al Balah. The military’s announcement on Friday in effect further shrinks a zone that by last month had already been reduced in size by more than a fifth. Israel said the evacuation orders followed rocket fire from those areas and what it described as resumed terrorist activity. The Israeli military has characterized the already overcrowded humanitarian zone as safer than other parts of Gaza, but has made clear that it will go after Hamas anywhere it believes it has a presence.
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Iran is expected to delay planned reprisals against Israel for the assassination of a top Hamas leader in Tehran to allow mediators time to make a high-stakes push for a cease-fire to end the war in Gaza, U.S., Iranian and Israeli officials said on Friday.
Top American, Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari officials met in Doha, the Qatari capital, for a second day of talks on Friday in an attempt to resolve remaining gaps between Israel and Hamas. As those talks concluded, a joint statement from the United States, Egypt and Qatar said a “bridging proposal” had been presented to both parties. Senior officials from those three governments are expected to reconvene in Cairo before the end of next week.
It was not immediately clear if this timeline would change Iran’s assessments.
For more than two weeks, the region has anxiously awaited Iranian-led retaliation for the assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas’s political branch, and Fuad Shukr, a top commander in Hezbollah, the Lebanese armed group backed by Iran. Iran and Hezbollah have both vowed revenge, raising fears of regional all-out war.
After the first day of talks ended on Thursday night, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, the Qatari prime minister, called the acting Iranian foreign minister, Ali Bagheri Kani. Mr. Al Thani encouraged Iran to refrain from any escalation given the cease-fire talks in Doha, according to two Iranian officials and three other officials familiar with the call, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
By Friday, Israeli intelligence had assessed that Hezbollah and Iran had lowered the level of alertness in their rocket and missile units, according to five Israeli officials. Israel now believes the Iranian-led response — already apparently delayed several times — will take place at a later date, the officials said. The officials have cautioned that their assessments are rapidly changing given the fluidity of events. Intelligence has been sparse and changes frequently, and Iran and Hezbollah are known to be constantly assessing the situation.
Fears of a wider regional conflict threaten to compound the devastation caused by Israel’s offensive in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians and destroyed large swaths of the enclave. Israel launched the war after Hamas carried out an expansive surprise attack on southern Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people and saw 250 others abducted to Gaza, according to the Israeli authorities.
Israel and Hamas have been negotiating on and off for months over a three-phase cease-fire deal which would see the gradual release of the remaining 115 living and dead hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners. Under the terms of the deal, Israel would withdraw forces from Gaza and both sides would ultimately reach a permanent truce.
Several key points of contention between Israel and Hamas remain unresolved despite repeated rounds of talks.
Hamas refused to participate in the latest round of deliberations, which it labeled a delaying tactic by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister. But Hamas officials had voiced willingness to speak with mediators if significant progress was made in the summit, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Mr. Netanyahu has stiffened Israel’s terms for an agreement in recent weeks, including calling for Israeli troops to remain on the Gazan side of its border with Egypt to prevent Hamas from rearming itself.
Over the past few days, Western diplomats have repeatedly shuttled across the region in an attempt to head off the anticipated escalation between Israel and Iran.
On Friday, the British and French foreign ministers arrived in Israel to discuss the ongoing cease-fire talks, as well as attempts to avoid all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah. And Egypt’s foreign minister, Badr Abdelatty, who met with Lebanese officials in Beirut on Friday, said that a cease-fire in Gaza was “the basis for stopping the escalation” in the region, according to Lebanese state-run media.
On Friday, the Israeli prime minister’s office said that the U.S. secretary of state, Antony J. Blinken, was expected to meet with Mr. Netanyahu in Israel on Monday.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting from Jerusalem and Euan Ward from Beirut.
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Israeli settler attacks on Palestinians have surged in the West Bank, but a riot on Thursday in the village of Jit stood out for drawing rapid and unusual rebukes from Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose coalition government includes West Bank settlers in top positions.
The Israeli military condemned the attack, and said that dozens of Israeli civilians, including some wearing masks, had set fire to vehicles and hurled rocks and firebombs. It said that its forces, along with Israeli Border Police, were dispatched to the scene and dispersed the rioters by firing shots into the air and “removing the Israeli civilians from the town.”
The Palestinian Authority said that one Palestinian had been shot dead during the attack and that another was critically injured. The Israeli military said it was looking into reports of a fatality and that it had opened an investigation with other security agencies. One rioter was arrested and transferred to the police for questioning.
The prime minister’s office said in a statement that Mr. Netanyahu took the riots seriously and pledged to find and prosecute those responsible for “any criminal act.”
The attack also drew condemnation from the United States and the European Union on Friday. Jack Lew, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, said he was “appalled” by the violence. “These attacks must stop and the criminals be held to account,” he said in a post on social media.
As the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas has stretched into its 11th month, Israel has increased its military activity against what it terms suspected terrorism in the occupied West Bank, and violent settler attacks have surged at the same time.
Far-right ministers in Mr. Netanyahu’s government — particularly Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the minister of national security, who are both West Bank settlers — have espoused divisive rhetoric and advanced policies to expand Israel’s hold on the territory.
The West Bank is home to about 2.7 million Palestinians and more than 500,000 settlers. Israel seized control of the territory from Jordan in 1967 during a war with three Arab states, and Israelis have since settled there with both tacit and explicit government approval. The international community largely considers settlements illegal, and many outposts also violate Israeli laws.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which tracks violent incidents in the West Bank, said in its latest update on Wednesday that Israeli settlers had carried out 25 attacks against Palestinians in the previous week. Since the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that set off the war in Gaza, the agency has recorded around 1,250 attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinians and their property.
“There has been an uptick in vigilante attacks by a minority of settlers,” David Makovsky, director of the Koret Project on Arab-Israel relations at the Washington Institute, said in an interview. “The West Bank is a tinderbox.”
Few attacks, however, have generated the kind of immediate approbation from Israeli officials that followed the storming of Jit.
In July, a departing Israeli general issued a harsh rebuke of the government’s policies in the West Bank and condemned rising “nationalist crime” by Jewish settlers. Retired Maj. Gen. Yehuda Fuks, the former chief of Israel’s Central Command, said in a speech that the actions of a violent minority threatened Israel’s security, undermined Israel’s reputation internationally and sowed fear among Palestinians.
Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, expressed a similar sentiment on Thursday in response to the riot in Jit. “This is not our way and certainly not the way of Torah and Judaism,” Mr. Herzog said in a post on social media. He accused an “extremist minority” of settlers of harming Israel’s standing in the international community during an “especially sensitive and difficult time.”
Aaron Boxerman and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting.
