According to CNN, Egyptian intelligence transformed the proposed agreement for a ceasefire in Gaza without warning either Israel or the other Qatari and American mediators. Cairo is now threatening to end its role as intermediary, while Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Wednesday May 23 that he wanted to resume talks.
He is the man, according to CNN, who prevented the truce in Gaza. As negotiations underway for weeks appeared to be on the verge of success, Ahmed Abdel Khalek, a senior Egyptian intelligence official, reportedly discreetly modified the terms of a ceasefire proposal that Israel had already signed at the beginning of May. De facto defeating the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and condemning the prospect of a temporary end to the fighting in Gaza.
Three sources told the American channel on Wednesday, May 22, that the ceasefire agreement announced by the Islamist movement Hamas on May 6 was not the one that the Qataris or the Americans thought they had submitted for examination. final. The modified document – which the American media obtained – provided for a permanent ceasefire and a “lasting calm” to be achieved in the second phase of the project. Israel unsurprisingly refused this proposal, notably because of this formula, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting since the start of his offensive that a “crushing victory” on Hamas is a prerequisite for any cessation of hostilities, as is the release of hostages still held.
General Ahmed Abdel Khalek is none other than the principal deputy of the head of Egyptian intelligence, Abbas Kamel, who was the counterpart of CIA director Bill Burns in the ceasefire talks. According to various local media, the man has been in charge of the Palestinian question within these same services since 2018. An issue that he was already familiar with, having notably been an advisor to the Egyptian representation in the Palestinian territories, then having worked on the agreement which led to the release of Israeli corporal Gilad Shalit, detained in Gaza from 2006 to 2011, in exchange for the release of a thousand Palestinian prisoners.
“Freak”
The changes he made sparked a wave of anger and protest among American, Qatari and Israeli officials. “We have all been fooled,” said one of these three sources contacted by CNN. Bill Burns, who led the U.S. effort to negotiate a truce, was in the region when he learned that the Egyptians had changed the terms of the agreement. Angry and embarrassed, according to the American channel, he “almost lost his temper”, whereas it is rather renowned for being usually measured.
Since these revelations, Egypt has made its wrath known. The head of the state information service, Diaa Rashwan, declared Wednesday, May 22, in a statement published on Facebook, that “the allegation” from CNN “was based on no reliable journalistic source” and was “devoid of any information or fact”. This scoop could even “push the Egyptian side to make the decision to completely withdraw from the mediation it is carrying out in the conflict”, he threatened. “If negotiations resume, the Qataris are expected to play a bigger role in the next round,” declares, in the same vein, one of the three CNN sources. While recalling that Egypt should always count, because of its essential proximity to Hamas and because Israel also prefers to trade with Cairo rather than with Doha.
The Israeli war cabinet, for its part, gave the green light this Thursday, May 23, to the resumption of negotiations with a view to freeing hostages. A decision which comes after the broadcast of a video showing the kidnapping of Israeli soldiers by Hamas fighters on October 7. In this sequence of just over three minutes – taken from a two-hour video filmed on an on-board camera by Hamas commandos -, according to the families, we can see young women, some with bloody faces, sitting on the ground. in pajamas, their hands tied behind their backs by their captors. These images will “strengthen my resolve to fight with all my might until Hamas is eliminated, to ensure that what we saw tonight will never happen again,” reacted Benyamin Netanyahu on his Telegram account.