The Israeli negotiating delegation was approved by Benyamin Netanyahu at yesterday's special meeting with a negotiating mandate that rumors call "reasonable," a few hours before boarding for Doha.
On the eve of the meeting, it was learned that the prime minister does not intend to compromise on one point: the release of 33 live hostages in the first phase of the agreement and not 18 and 15 bodies, as some speculation had reported. The names of the mediators have been confirmed for now: the heads of the Mossad and Shin Bet, David Barnea and Ronen Bar, and the person in charge of the kidnapped and missing IDF soldiers, Nitzan Alon. And another name, the same one that has already poisoned previous trips of the team: Netanyahu's political advisor, Ofir Fleck.
The aggravating factor in this round is that the Doha summit faces an even more complex picture than the previous ones: the "harsh" response announced by Iran to the killing of the political leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, the dangerous escalation with Hezbollah, which wants to avenge the elimination of its military leader Fuad Shukr in Beirut, to which the Jewish state responds by threatening to move the border.
And if on one side there is Netanyahu with his political and personal interests, on the other there is Yahya Sinwar, who is managing the mediation for the first time as political head of Hamas. After announcing three days ago that the Islamist group will not show up in Qatar because "the agreement proposed in July by Joe Biden is valid", Hamas reiterated on Wednesday that it will be absent. But Sinwar's message is contradictory: on the one hand he lets it be known that he will participate if Israel stops the fighting, on the other he refers to the three phases of the Biden plan, on the other he presents amendments that range from the release of the leader of Fatah, the life-sentenced Marwan Barghouti, to another hundred important prisoners for whom the US will have to act as guarantor.
Qatar and Egypt are also taking part in the summit promoted by the US, also with the presence of CIA chief William Burns and Brett McGurk, the White House coordinator for the Middle East. It does not seem obvious that Sinwar's delegates will not be physically present. "Starting new negotiations allows Israel to impose new conditions and use them to carry out further massacres," Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri told Reuters. Words, anonymous mediators said, that do not exclude the possibility of progress since the chief negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, confirmed in his role a few days ago by Sinwar himself, resides in Doha and has open channels with Egypt and Qatar.
Last night Biden and Harris were briefed on developments in the Middle East by the US National Security Council, while Trump spoke with the Israeli Prime Minister. Today UN summit on Yemen.
Three years ago the Taliban took power in Afghanistan.
(Online Union)
