STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
We have an update on cease-fire talks that restart today in the Israel-Hamas war that the students were protesting.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
The talks could hardly be more urgent. The Gaza Ministry of Health says the death toll has now topped 40,000 people. Families are being displaced repeatedly, and dozens of hostages from Israel are still being held by Hamas. Meanwhile, the United States hopes mediating a cease-fire could also head off a wider war involving Hamas' ally, Iran.
INSKEEP: NPR's Kat Lonsdorf is covering this from Tel Aviv. Hi, Kat.
KAT LONSDORF, BYLINE: Hey, Steve.
INSKEEP: OK. So in theory, everybody knows the plan here. President Biden put out a plan in May, and everybody is supposed to get together and tweak it, supposedly. What is the plan?
LONSDORF: Yeah, so back on May 31, President Biden laid out this plan. It called for a cease-fire, the release of Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners and detainees and the reconstruction of Gaza. And it was going to happen in three phases, the first of which would be six weeks long and have a guaranteed and complete cease-fire, while the two sides take those six weeks to hammer out the details of the second phase, essentially. It was a plan that the White House officials back then said Hamas had already accepted and Israel had backed, but, you know, that was more than 10 weeks ago, and several rounds of talks since then have ended at an impasse.
INSKEEP: OK. What are the sticking points in this plan that the two sides supposedly had accepted?
LONSDORF: Well, one has to do with the cease-fire after that first six-week phase. Israel wants the ability to resume the war if it feels that Hamas is prolonging the talks without reaching agreements, and Hamas instead wants a guaranteed end to the war. And there are other disagreements yet to be resolved, including whether Israel can screen Palestinian civilians returning to the north, the number of Israeli hostages to be released, the number and identities of Palestinian prisoners and detainees to be released and who will have control over the Philadelphi Corridor. That's a strip of land along Gaza's border with Egypt that Israel took over in May. I will say that the mediators put out a statement last week saying that they are very aware of these differences and they're ready with a final proposal to bridge these remaining issues, if necessary.
INSKEEP: Now we're getting to the point that makes me feel even more skeptical about these talks - or at least, I have questions as a journalist - because the idea is you get everybody in a room, and they talk. Not everybody's going to be in the room to talk. Who will be there?
LONSDORF: Right, so Qatari, Egyptian and American mediators will be there, including CIA Chief William Burns and U.S. envoy Brett McGurk, but this is what you're hinting at, Steve. As for Israel and Hamas, Hamas has said it will not participate, basically saying that, you know, they already responded to the U.S.-backed plan with a counterproposal in July and that mediators can use that. I will say the talks are in Doha, where some Hamas leadership is based, so they are close by, and they say that if Israel agrees to that counterproposal, they're ready to talk.
INSKEEP: OK.
LONSDORF: Israel is participating. You know, they sent a high-level delegation to Doha, but Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is the one, at the end of the day, who has to commit to the deal, and for a long time now, he's said that he will not succumb to pressure to end the war. He's standing up to his security chiefs here. All of them say that now it's time to strike a deal with Hamas and shift the focus to Iran and Hezbollah, so we're waiting to see if he changes his position at all.
INSKEEP: How does all of this news of peace talks look to people in the war zone in Gaza?
LONSDORF: Well, the stakes are very high, especially for the more than 2 million Palestinians living in Gaza under dire conditions with daily fatalities from Israeli airstrikes, and also for the remaining Israeli hostages. They're languishing, and possibly even dying, in captivity in Gaza. You know, these are all people who don't have days and weeks to wait, and then there's this added pressure to this round of talks. After the recent assassinations of the Hamas leader in Tehran and a senior Hezbollah official in Beirut, Israel has been bracing for a vowed retaliation from Iran and its proxies. You know, many are worried about the potential of an all-out regional war, and the U.S. and other international parties are hoping that a Gaza cease-fire deal could convince Iran to hold its fire.
INSKEEP: OK. Thanks for a clear explanation, Kat. Really appreciate it.
LONSDORF: Thanks so much.
INSKEEP: That's NPR's Kat Lonsdorf in Tel Aviv. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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