Negotiations in Cairo over a possible agreement to pause the fighting in Gaza have been extended for another three days, an Egyptian official told The New York Times on Tuesday night.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the tenor of the first day of the talks was “positive”.
The talks over the next three days will involve lower-level officials, who will continue discussing a new framework for a deal, one that would ensure a certain number of hostages would be released and that the fighting would be halted for a certain number of weeks, a US official told The New York Times.
Earlier on Tuesday, a US official told CNN that the Cairo talks were productive and serious, but did not yet arrive at a breakthrough that would result in a final deal.
Hamas and Israel have each rejected formulas proposed recently. Last month, a broad framework for an agreement was sketched out in Paris by representatives of the United States, Israel, Qatar and Egypt. That proposal included a six-week ceasefire and the exchange of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian Arab prisoners in Israel.
Hamas came back with a counterproposal that demanded the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip.
In addition, the terror group demanded that the hostages to be freed in the first stage would be women, children, the sick, and the elderly, in exchange for the release of all Palestinian Arab women, children, and men aged 50 and above currently held by Israel.
This would include approximately 1,500 other Palestinian Arab prisoners held by Israel, including 500 convicted of murder who are serving life or lengthy sentences.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the counterproposal and said he would never “surrender to the ludicrous demands of Hamas.”
Despite all the conditions that Hamas set for a deal, a senior Biden administration official told NBC News that the response provided by the terrorist organization was “generally positive.”