CNN
—
Although protracted talks to try to secure the release of the hostages and reach a ceasefire in Gaza will resume in the coming days, there is little expectation of a breakthrough before the US presidential election in less than two weeks, officials told CNN.
The reality of the election’s impact was also underscored this week when former President Donald Trump revealed that he spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu several times in recent days.
Top negotiators from the United States, Israel and Qatar are scheduled to meet in Doha on Sunday to discuss efforts to reach a deal – the first high-level meeting in more than two months – as US officials have argued for renewed momentum following Israel’s killing of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar.
But privately, some US officials acknowledge that Netanyahu – who is intimately familiar with and tracking the ins and outs of the US presidential election and the potential implications for US foreign policy – is waiting to make serious decisions about the future of the Gaza conflict until he knows who his next colleague in Washington DC will be.
In the days after Sinwar’s death, Biden advisers expressed cautious optimism that ceasefire discussions could resume – with Secretary of State Antony Blinken embarking on his eleventh trip to the region, including a two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Netanyahu.
But during that time, Netanyahu solicited input from Trump, the Republican nominee. Trump claimed during a rally in Georgia that Netanyahu had called him at least twice in recent days.
“Bibi called me yesterday, called me the day before,” Trump boasted. “We will take care of Israel and they know it.”
Some US officials point to this view as the root of Netanyahu’s tendency to wait to know the election results before making any major decision on the Gaza conflict – the prime minister believes there may soon be an American leader in Washington who is far more sympathetic to his cause than President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
“There is no checking on Bibi,” a Democrat close to the White House told CNN. “He knows he has two to three weeks to do what he wants.”
Locked in a tight race with Harris, Trump has seemed eager to publicly boost Netanyahu’s ego and tout the two men’s relationship. Trump’s allies also privately played the Netanyahu-Trump phone calls to demonstrate that Netanyahu is serious about the possibility of a Trump victory. A Trump adviser claimed that “these phone calls show that the international community sees Trump as the solution rather than Biden.”
“And if Netanyahu didn’t think Trump would win, he wouldn’t call him,” they said.
Trump has also held talks with allies about who might join his Middle East negotiating team if he wins the election, sources familiar with the talks said.
Biden hesitated when asked whether he believes that Netanyahu, by stepping up countless military campaigns while his administration calls for de-escalation, is trying to sway an election where the ongoing war has hurt Democrats’ favorability with certain constituencies, including Arab- American voters in key swing states. like Michigan.
“No administration has helped Israel more than I have. Nobody. Nobody. Nobody. And I think Bibi needs to remember that,” Biden said from the White House briefing room. “And whether he’s trying to influence the election, I don’t know, but I reckon not with that.”
There is thinking in the Biden administration that Netanyahu would be more open to ending the war if Harris were to win because he believes the vice president appears to be following through on threats made by the United States to withhold aid to Israel if it does not change course in Gaza on the humanitarian front.
However, there is broad agreement that any immediate decisions are unlikely. Israeli officials have also told people who have been in contact with them about how to stabilize Gaza that no decisions on Gaza’s future will be made until after the US election, according to a source familiar with the talks.
Still, the Biden administration is publicly signaling that it hopes to advance efforts to bring the hostages home and end a war that threatens to tarnish Biden’s foreign policy legacy.
“One of the things we’re doing is looking at whether there are different options that we can pursue to get us to a conclusion, to get us to an outcome,” Blinken said Thursday.
It will be part of the conversation between the negotiators, including CIA director Bill Burns and Mossad chief David Barnea, when they meet in the Qatari capital on Sunday.
Blinken, throughout his trip to the Middle East, urged Israel to seize the “decisive moment” after the killing of Sinwar, which the US claimed was the biggest obstacle to a deal. However, Netanyahu also created obstacles to a deal, CNN has widely reported.
“The fact that (Sinwar) is no longer with us creates perhaps an opening to actually move forward and make a deal,” the top US diplomat in Qatar said on Thursday, noting that it remains unclear whether Hamas is ready to get involved.
Despite the high-level vacancies at the top of Hamas and a decentralized structure in Gaza, the Biden administration believes the group’s senior operatives in Doha – Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashal and Mousa Abu Marzook – represent a leadership structure that could get involved if they wanted to. .
“External and internal, they are able to make decisions,” said a source familiar with the deliberations.
Both Qatar and Egypt have entered into dialogue with the group, which has not publicly appointed a new leader.
Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said Thursday that “the possibilities are abundant if both sides have the will to end the war.”