Axios….
Senior U.S., Israeli and Qatari officials held secret talks at the White House on Tuesday that honed in on the key remaining sticking point for a long-sought ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza, two sources with direct knowledge tell Axios.
The big picture: President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu twice in the last 48 hours as he presses both Israel and Hamas to finalize a deal. White House envoy Steve Witkoff said Tuesday that three of four areas of disagreement had been resolved in recent days.
- That sticking point, sources tell Axios, is the lines to which the Israel Defense Forces would withdraw during the 60-day truce.
- A tense debate on that issue in the previously undisclosed meeting on Tuesday helped produce clear progress on that front, the sources say.
Behind the scenes: Shortly before Trump and Netanyahu met on Tuesday evening, Witkoff met with a senior Qatari official and with Netanyahu’s top adviser, Ron Dermer.
- Two sources with direct knowledge say the meeting focused on the redeployment of IDF forces as part of a ceasefire deal.
Friction point: Both sources said Witkoff and the Qatari official made it clear to Dermer that the map proposed by Israel — which involves a far more narrow redeployment than the one the IDF carried out during the previous ceasefire — is a non-starter.
- The Qatari official said Hamas would likely reject the proposal and the talks could even collapse over the issue — going so far as to ask that Israel and the U.S. not blame Qatar, which is mediating the talks, if that happens.
- Witkoff told Dermer that a redeployment map that looks like “a Smotrich plan” and includes an ongoing Israeli occupation of large parts of the Gaza Strip is a no-go for the Trump administration. He was referring to Israeli ultranationalist Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who is pressing Netanyahu to demand that the IDF remain in large parts of Gaza….
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