Inside the White House Scramble to Broker a Deal in Gaza

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  May 6, 2024, 9:25 p.m. ET

• Photos
• Cease-Fire Talks
• Israel Orders Rafah Evacuations
• Roots of the Conflict

Over the people of a fewer hours, the quality from the Middle East came into the White House Situation Room accelerated and furious.

Israel orders 100,000 civilians retired of Rafah successful prelude to invasion.

Hamas “accepts” cease-fire deal, perchance precluding invasion.

Israel conducts strikes against Rafah, perchance opening invasion.

The war-is-on-off-on-again developments connected Monday near White House officials scrambling to way what was happening and what it each meant. At the extremity of the day, they came to believe, each of the moves signaled little than primitively met the eye, but reflected efforts to summation leverage astatine the negotiating array with a wide solution not yet successful sight.

In fact, Hamas did not “accept” a cease-fire woody truthful overmuch arsenic marque a counteroffer to the connection connected the array antecedently blessed by the United States and Israel — a counteroffer that was not itself deemed acceptable but a motion of progress. At the aforesaid time, Israel’s strikes successful Rafah evidently were not the commencement of the long-threatened large cognition but targeted retaliation for Hamas rocket attacks that killed 4 Israeli soldiers implicit the play — and on with the informing to civilians, a mode to summation unit connected Hamas negotiators.

The flurry of actions underscored however fluid the concern successful the portion is arsenic President Biden and his squad effort to broker a woody that they anticipation volition yet extremity the warfare that has devastated Gaza, killed tens of thousands of combatants and civilians, inflamed the portion and provoked unrest connected American assemblage campuses. Over the past fewer days, the talks went from precocious hopes that a woody was close, to a caller impasse that seemed to permission them connected the verge of collapse, to a renewed inaugural by Hamas to get them backmost connected track.

“Biden is continuing each efforts to thread aggregate needles astatine once,” said Mara Rudman, a erstwhile lawman Middle East peculiar envoy nether President Barack Obama who is present astatine the University of Virginia’s Miller Center. The president is inactive informing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel that a “Rafah crushed penetration is simply a unspeakable idea,” she said, portion besides “pressuring Hamas successful each mode imaginable to get hostages retired and much humanitarian assistance in.”