This part 1 of a 2 parter for today as the focus in the media is on the inability to get a solution between the sides involved….
For weeks, the difficult talks on a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas have snagged on the question of an Israeli postwar military presence in Gaza. But American officials say that another issue has also emerged as a key sticking point: the release of hostages held in Gaza and Palestinians in Israeli prisons.
As the United States, Egypt and Qatar try to finalize a new cease-fire proposal to narrow the gaps between Israel and Hamas, U.S. officials say that the two sides have not agreed on how many people each side would set free, nor on who they would be, in the first, six-week phase of a truce….
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President Biden this week signaled that Mr. Netanyahu was not doing enough to bring the hostages home, but U.S. officials have in public focused blame on Hamas for holding up the negotiations. At the White House on Wednesday, a senior U.S. official who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity said that the killings of the hostages had not only injected “a sense of urgency” into the talks but also “called into question Hamas’s readiness to do a deal of any kind.”
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Hamas leaders have blamed Israel for the impasse and accused Mr. Netanyahu of adding new conditions to previously agreed proposals, and documents reviewed last month by The New York Times bolster that claim.
Mr. Netanyahu has demanded that Israel’s military retain control over Gaza’s southern border with Egypt. Hamas has called that demand unacceptable….
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The IDF says it is targeting people involved in advancing attacks on Israel, either in collaboration with Hezbollah or independently, a testament to the long reach of Israeli intelligence. Officials and experts in Lebanon say the strikes have pushed Hamas closer to Hezbollah, the much larger group that is this country’s dominant military and political force.
“This is going to define the future of Hamas in Lebanon in a way which it is going to be even more dependent on Iranian and Hezbollah assistance and oversight,” said Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
Hamas and Hezbollah share a common enemy in Israel and a common patron in Iran. But their ideological roots are divergent — Hamas is a Sunni militant group and Hezbollah is Shiite — and at times their alliance has been uneasy….
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The Biden administration is reportedly reevaluating its approach to ceasefire-hostage negotiations after Hamas killed six hostages, according to unspecified US officials cited by Axios on September 5
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