Hamas leader’s killing leaves Gaza cease-fire talks in doubt

The killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on Wednesday has set back and may have struck a death knell for U.S. hopes of reaching agreement in already failing negotiations on a cease-fire and hostage-release deal to end the Gaza war.

Haniyeh — the chief negotiator for the militants in indirect Israel-Hamas talks mediated since last November by the United States, Qatar and Egypt — was widely viewed as more realistic about the advantages of reaching a deal than Hamas military chief Yehiya Sinwar, according to Arab and U.S. officials closely familiar with the negotiations, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive issue.

“It definitely means that the guys in Gaza,” where Sinwar is believed hiding in a Hamas tunnel, “will have even more sway now,” one Arab official said. The official charged that Israel had launched an airstrike that killed Haniyeh to try to “sabotage the talks.”

Israel has not acknowledged the strike that killed Haniyeh, who was in Tehran for the inauguration of the newly elected Iranian president, and U.S. officials said they were informed after it occurred. In a televised statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said only that Israel had dealt “crushing blows” to Hezbollah — in a Beirut airstrike Tuesday that killed a senior official of that group — and to Hamas.

In public statements, the Biden administration deflected questions about it — beyond stipulating that the United States was — as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “not aware of or involved in.” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a White House briefing that he could not “confirm or deny” reports of Israeli responsibility.

Kirby also declined to speculate on what effect the two men’s deaths would have on ongoing Gaza talks, although he acknowledged that “these reports over the last 24 to 48 hours certainly don’t help. I’m not going to be Pollyannish about it.”

Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Center for International and Security Studies, said he disagreed Israel was trying to end the negotiations. “I don’t think that’s the main reason,” although “it may be the outcome. … My view talking with” the prime minister and others in his office, Jones said, “is that anywhere they can get their hands on a Hamas leader. … I think they’ll hit them.”

“I think this is more retribution against Hamas than trying to scuttle the deal,” he said. “But at the end of the day, if the deal is scuttled,” Netanyahu is unlikely to care.

In a public statement that was reported by Iranian media, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said Israel had “paved the way for a harsh punishment to be imposed on it.” He said Iran considers it “our duty to take vengeance.”

Officials said little follow-up action, either on the negotiations or an Iranian retaliation for the Israeli attack, was expected until after Haniyeh’s funeral Friday in Doha or three days of official mourning that end Sunday.

But the latest round of cease-fire talks, which was held in Rome last weekend, achieved little as Israel added new demands to the proposal announced May 31 by President Biden.

The three-phase plan includes a six-week initial stage with a cease-fire, redeployment of Israeli troops inside Gaza away from populated areas and a surge in humanitarian aid. Female, elderly and wounded hostages held in Gaza would be exchanged in staged batches for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Palestinians would also have free passage to return to their homes in areas that have long been blocked by Israeli troops — most of them from areas in southern and central Gaza where they fled Israeli attacks in the north.

Assuming no violations occurred, the six-week cease-fire would continue indefinitely as the parties negotiated a second phase calling for a “permanent” truce, including complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the release of remaining hostages. A third phase would begin internationally financed Gaza reconstruction, new Palestinian governance for the enclave and the eventual establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

While the administration has long accused Hamas of holding up a deal that it said Israel had already agreed to, hopes rose when the Hamas leadership in early July dropped a demand that an end state of permanent cease-fire and full Israeli withdrawal would be guaranteed by the mediators before it would enter the first phase.

A week later, as talks resumed in Cairo, Biden voiced confidence that a deal was within reach, saying the “framework” outlined in the 4½-page document on the table had been “agreed by both Israel and Hamas.” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan cited “positive” signs.

Hamas had “backed down on its demand that they needed details of the (permanent) cease-fire to be agreed before they entered phase one,” the Arab official said. But “then Bibi,” the nickname by which Netanyahu is widely known, “changed his demands.”

When negotiators met last weekend in Rome, Israeli negotiator David Barnea, head of the Mossad intelligence agency, handed to his U.S. counterpart, CIA Director William J. Burns, a one-page document solidifying new demands that Israel had already raised. Among them was insistence that “freedom of movement” of Gazans back to the north — where Israel believes Hamas may try to regroup — “would be discussed at a later date” after the temporary cease-fire and hostage return.

Israel also insisted that its troops will remain along the Gaza side of the border with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and in control of the Rafah crossing between Egypt and Gaza, which they have occupied since beginning a military offensive in that southern area in early May. Its new demands said the terms of Israel’s initial “redeployment” throughout Gaza would be “discussed at a future date” after the initial cease-fire was in place.

“They don’t even specify when they want to discuss it,” the Arab official said of the Israeli document. There were other “new things” that “came out of nowhere.”

Barnea asked that the document, through Egypt and Qatar, be given to Hamas. Egypt — which has long said any Israeli presence along its border with Gaza was unacceptable — immediately objected to those demands.

“It was clear in Rome we were going around in circles,” the Arab official said. “Everybody was frustrated … even Barnea,” who has reportedly been at odds with Netanyahu’s negotiating strategy. “I think even the United States was shocked.”

U.S. officials declined to comment on the specifics of the meeting.

No further talks have been scheduled, and Haniyeh’s killing has added to the pessimism.

“Political assassinations & continued targeting of civilians in Gaza while talks continue leads us to ask, how can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?” Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani wrote on social media Wednesday morning. “Peace needs serious partners & a global stance against the disregard for human life.”

In a statement, Egypt’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said a “dangerous Israeli escalation policy” over the past two days had undermined negotiating efforts. “The coincidence of this regional escalation with the lack of progress in the cease-fire negotiations in Gaza increases the complexity of the situation and indicates the absence of Israeli political will to calm it down,” the statement said.

“It’s a clear way of kind of trying to sabotage the talks,” the Arab official said, describing “the Bibi playbook” as “trying to force Hamas to pull out so he can say to the hostage families, ‘Look, it’s not me. I was willing to accept the deal, and they ruined it.’” Arab governments have long speculated that Netanyahu is stalling for a possible electoral victory in November of Donald Trump, seeing him as more amenable to Israeli views than Biden.

On the Hamas side, the killing “further complicates” negotiations both symbolically and substantively. “Haniyeh was not the sole decision-maker, the Arab official said. “Haniyeh was not the sole decision-maker; they needed (leadership inside) Gaza to agree as well. But toward the end, he was one of the ones who saw the value of a deal and wanted to reach it … someone whose voice was heavily respected among both the ones inside and outside.”

“So you’ve lost a voice who could potentially push for that,” the official said.

The Biden administration, which on Wednesday called for U.S. citizens to leave or refrain from travel to Lebanon, is also acutely conscious of the possibility for escalation of the broader Middle East conflict, although “we don’t believe that it is inevitable,” Kirby said.

Just last week, senior administration officials had declared concerns about escalation to be “exaggerated.”

Jones, at CSIS, said his main concern was about “Israel laying waste to parts of Lebanon, which they will do, if this gets to that.”

While the Pentagon has not announced any additional deployments to the region, the United States has assembled at least a dozen warships nearby, a U.S. defense official said. Kirby and other officials reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to Israeli defense.

“We don’t want to see an escalation, and everything we’ve been doing since the 7th of October,” when the Gaza war began with Hamas’s invasion of Israel, “we’ve been trying to manage those risks,” Kirby said. “Those risks go up and down every day. They are certainly up right now.”

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Dan Lamothe contributed to this report.