Egyptian intelligence quietly changed the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed off on earlier this month, ultimately scuttling a deal that could have released Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and set a pathway to temporarily end the fighting in Gaza, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
The ceasefire agreement that Hamas ended up announcing on May 6 was not what the Qataris or the Americans believed had been submitted to Hamas for a potential final review, the sources said.
The changes made by Egyptian intelligence, the details of which have not been previously reported, led to a wave of anger and recrimination among officials from the US, Qatar and Israel, and left ceasefire talks at an impasse.
Now that is a twist I didn’t see coming.
That’s a twist pretty much everyone saw who is not Israel hater. Israel reported the very day the talks broke up that terms were changed, but Hamas announced day prior they are accepting the terms, making Israel look like they are the ones who didn’t accept.
It was the same story about hospital being bombed. Everyone reported Israel bombing hospital and it took months of independent investigation to figure out what Israel initially said, which was that the stray rocket fell on parking lot and amount of victims wasn’t 500.
This is what Hamas does, fight media war making Israel look bad at every opportunity. Yesterday we could see just how much they fact check things when they reported a joke from social media as a fact checked news story about how “MOSAD agent named Eli Copter was responsible for deaths of Iranian leaders”… Seriously (h)Eli Copter. We came up with better jokes when we were kids.
Israel doesn’t need any help looking bad. Anyone with an ounce of integrity already hates them.
It still hasnt been proven, independents aren’t allowed into the battle zone right now only those approved by Israel who then can’t claim to be unbiased.
This is what Hamas does, fight media war making Israel look bad at every opportunity.
I mean, that’s kind of predictable.
I think that the decision by Hamas to kick off a fight with Israel in the first place was a really bad idea, but let’s assume that they’ve committed to that. Hamas has no prospect whatsoever of winning a military conflict with Israel. Whatever gains they hope to make are going to have to be predicated on the actions of others, so they’re going to have to hope that they can sell someone else on involving themselves. And that’s going to mean the media and such.
Absolutely… but most people seem to be falling for it.
Well, specifically what do you mean by that?
As a strategy, I’d say that it hasn’t worked. I haven’t been following the conflict closely, but the only use of outside hard power that I off-the-cuff recall seeing has been:
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Some rockets out of Lebanon.
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Some long-range weapons that Iran fired – some of which were shot down by the US, France, UK, Jordan, and Israel.
Like, Israel’s caught some negative press, sure, but if you’re Hamas, you aren’t gonna start a war that you’re gonna lose in hard power terms with the goal of getting some words.
And a lot of that criticism, I believe, isn’t related to what Hamas would probably want to see. Hamas wants Israel to stop existing. That’s not what is being talked about.
In the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, Arab residents of the region tried to eject Jewish settlers, and Jews took the opportunity to kick Arabs out from a lot of the territory entirely. I think that the meaningful criticism mostly surrounds the potential for Israel doing something like a repeat, but involving the Gaza Strip – if you’ve got a war that the other guy kicked off, you’ve got some political impetus to rewrite the situation to be more to your liking. I mean, Hamas doesn’t want the conversation to be over whether it’s acceptable for Israel to force Gaza residents out into Egypt. That’s not a situation where Hamas stands to gain in terms of having the war at all. They want to win something, not have pressure limiting how badly they wind up losing.
Actually it has been working. Everyone is calling Israel evil and calling for recognition of genocide. ICC is summoning Netanyahu and number of countries are recognizing Palestine as a country. This has not happened so far. I know Hamas has only one goal which is destruction of Israel, but am not sure others realize this.
So in summary world is sending a message where terrorizing people, killing hundreds of innocents will get you what you want. More money, recognition and legitimacy. I dread to see what is coming in future.
Everyone is calling Israel evil and calling for recognition of genocide.
I mean, there are some vocal people out there, but I’d give reasonable odds that a lot of them weren’t too keen on Israel in the first place. Getting them more worked up doesn’t change the situation.
I don’t think that the meaningful parties here, the ones who could change the situation, have shown much interest in doing what Hamas would like to see.
What Hamas would need for this to be a successful strategy, I think, is concrete action from outside countries aiming to produce a situation not only more-favorable to Hamas than the pre-war situation, but one so much more favorable that it’s worth the costs of the war for Gaza. I haven’t seen anything that looks to me like that.
Indeed there are a lot of vocal people here who weren’t keen o Israel to begin with. But that shouldn’t justify calling deaths of civilians on either side.
aiming to produce a situation not only more-favorable to Hamas than the pre-war situation, but one so much more favorable that it’s worth the costs of the war for Gaza
I think this is mostly due to Israel’s insistence that Hamas must perish. Which is why I guess every ceasefire talks are falling through constantly. There’s no future in which Hamas exists that Israel is willing to accept. Sadly a lot of innocent will pay the cost. So whatever happens Israel will double-down on eradicating Hamas while trying to minimize civilian casualties and Hamas will try to survive by doing the opposite.
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See, you’re being downvoted but I see no media openly recalling their articles and saying they jumped to conclusions.
Is Israeli innocent of everything - very doubtful. But people are screaming how bad Israel is because of what is seen in the media, that they argue and scream more about how bad they are when facts come out the media was wrong.
People scream about how bad israel is based on high civilians casualities, ton of genocidal israel statements and ton of videos documenting IDF crimes
Yes, and where do you see these?
Are you reading peer reviewed journal articles, or media articles about them? ICJ and ICC reports, or media commentary on it? Are you talking with victims and politicians, or what the media says is happening?
This is the point the other poster and I are getting at - your entire information on this conflict is the media that has been shown multiple times to jump to conclusions.
Does it excuse actions from both sides - no. But have a fucking think about what the media is telling you.
Tiktok and telegram have a ton of them unedited videos. Many of them are filmed by soldiers themseves venting about their crimes. There’s zero way to interpret them wrong
Lol
The three sources familiar with the matter told CNN that a senior Egyptian intelligence official named Ahmed Abdel Khalek was responsible for making the changes. Abdel Khalek is a senior deputy to the Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel, who has been Burns’ counterpart in leading Egypt’s mediation in the ceasefire talks.
One source familiar with the negotiations said Abdel Khalek told the Israelis one thing and Hamas another. More of Hamas’ demands were inserted into the original framework that Israel had tacitly agreed to in order to secure Hamas’ approval, the source said. But the other mediators were not informed; nor, critically, were the Israelis.
Oops?
In the age of secure electronic communications what’s the point of untrusted intermediaries?
PGP the message and send it via some method.
“When tech workers are asked to try diplomacy”
How would you get the other party’s public key?
The whole point of a public key is it can be publicized. Use any public publishing method, the more public the better.
Publicize/transmit it anywhere / everywhere you have plausible control or you can trace the origin of everything. Radio, newspapers, billboard, official website - multiple sources that all agree with each other should do it. You only need to do it once.
What was the change?
A Hamas document obtained by CNN outlining the version of the framework they agreed to included achieving a permanent ceasefire and a “sustainable calm” to be reached in the second phase of the three-stage deal. Israel has been averse to agreeing to discuss an end to the war before Hamas has been defeated and the remaining hostages are released from captivity.
Now, three weeks later, with ceasefire talks stalled, those involved are raising questions about the motives of Egypt, which for years has served as a key intermediary between Israel and Hamas, particularly Hamas members inside Gaza.
3 hostages per week for 6 weeks in return for an immediate withdrawal of all Israeli forces and a full end to the war.
In other words: 18 hostages, some of whom might be dead, and 114 who would never be returned.
This was not a minor change that could possibly be construed as testing which terms would be acceptable. This was a deliberate attempt to sabotage negotiations and produce a headline of “Hamas agrees to ceasefire” to avoid US pressure on Qatar to kick out Hamas leadership.
What source are you using? I can’t find that in the CNN article
I thought this was already known and intentional?
They said Hamas accepted a watered down version of the original deal which was that it included a permanent ceasefire of which Israel refused to agree to.
The point of Egypt being an intermediary was to convince both sides to come to an agreement, so it doesn’t really seem off that they would try changing requirements to see how each side would respond.
We knew the deal was changed, but not by who. (As far as I know.)
What in the world was Egypt thinking? 🤔 How would they profit from something this foolhardy?
It’s possible there was some bribe money in it for Ahmed Abdel Khalek. Lots of money to be made by providing weapons for continuing conflict, easy to bribe a secondary official to make sure any agreements were derailed.
I forgot about personal greed! Very much a possibility.
I forgot about personal greed
Oh wow. Wherever you’re living must be nice.
America was actively involved in these changes.
Also the reason israel didn’t see them is because israel didn’t send negotiators to Cairo.
