Sinwar faces growing pressure to end Gaza war

The CIA believes that the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, is coming under increasing pressure from his own military commanders to agree to a ceasefire agreement and end the war with Israel. CIA Director Bill Burns said this at a closed conference on Saturday, according to a source present.

Sinwar, the main architect of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, is “not worried about his mortality” but is under pressure because he is blamed for the enormous suffering in the Gaza Strip, Burns told the conference, the source said.

Burns, who has spent months conducting feverish negotiations as the Biden administration’s point man, said it is the duty of both the Israeli government and Hamas to seize this moment, more than nine months after the war began, to reach a ceasefire.

But the internal pressures Sinwar now faces have been new in the past two weeks, including calls from his own senior commanders who are tired of fighting, Burns said, according to the attendee at the confidential conference who was granted anonymity.

The CIA director was speaking at Allen & Company’s annual summer camp in Sun Valley, Idaho, sometimes called “summer camp for billionaires” because the secret, week-long event includes a glittering guest list of technology magnates, media figures and senior government officials.

The increasing pressure on Sinwar comes after Hamas and Israel agreed to a framework agreement presented by President Joe Biden in late May that US officials said would serve as the basis for an agreement to end the fighting.

Burns had just returned last week from his latest trip to the Middle East to try to advance negotiations on a ceasefire and hostage agreement in the Gaza Strip. He had previously met with fellow mediators from Qatar and Egypt and with the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence service.

On Saturday, Burns said there was a “fragile opportunity before us” and the chances of agreeing a ceasefire were greater than ever, months after a brief truce in November saw dozens of hostages released. But he stressed that the final phase of negotiations is always difficult, according to CNN.

The renewed push comes after previous talks failed in May following a similar spate of meetings and trips by Burns to the region.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under enormous domestic pressure to reach an agreement to release the last hostages from Gaza. Thousands of Israeli demonstrators regularly take to the streets in Tel Aviv and call on the government to focus on the release of the hostages and not on the military action.

“There are still gaps to close, but we are making progress, the trend is positive,” Biden said Thursday, “and I am committed to completing this agreement and ending this war that should end now.”

According to the Gaza Strip’s Health Ministry, more than 38,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign against Gaza. Thousands are believed to be missing under the rubble, and hundreds of thousands more are suffering from disease, hunger and homelessness, according to aid groups.

Aside from the enormous amount of detail being negotiated in the potential deal, talks are regularly delayed by difficulties in getting messages to and from Sinwar as Israel tries to hunt him down.

Of the three highest-ranking Hamas leaders in Gaza, Israel is said to have found and killed only one: Marwan Issa, the second in command of the military wing. Its military chief Mohammed Deif was the target of an Israeli bomb attack on Saturday in which, according to Palestinian health authorities, almost 100 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more injured.

Neither Israel nor the United States have determined whether the attack on Deif was successful.

US officials believe Sinwar no longer wants to rule Gaza, and both Israel and Hamas have agreed on a “transitional government” plan that would come into effect in the second phase of a ceasefire in which neither state will take control of Gaza, a US official told CNN.

Qatar has also made it clear that it will expel Hamas’ political leadership from its long-standing base abroad if the militant group does not go along with the plan, US officials say.

In Hamas communications recently viewed and reported by The Associated Press, senior Hamas leaders in Gaza urged outside figures in the group to accept Biden’s ceasefire proposal, citing heavy casualties and dire conditions in Gaza.

Perhaps as a sign of its commitment to ending the fighting, Hamas recently backed away from its central demand that a ceasefire agreement must include a commitment that it would lead to a permanent ceasefire afterwards – a long-standing sticking point in the talks that Israel had rejected.

Netanyahu then insisted that any agreement must allow Israel to resume fighting until its war aims are achieved.

According to CNN, this means that there could be a pause in the fighting during which some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners would be released before Israel resumes its military operations.

The framework proposed by Biden calls for a permanent ceasefire to be negotiated during the first phase of a pause in fighting, lasting as long as negotiations continue.

The same day Burns spoke, Netanyahu told a press conference that he would not deviate “one millimeter” from the framework set out by Biden, while claiming that Hamas had demanded 29 changes to the proposal, but that he himself refused to make any of them.