Hopes for Gaza Truce Grow as Hamas Joins Talks in Cairo

Mediators believe a deal to pause fighting and release hostages could come within days, but Hamas leader’s whereabouts remain a mystery

By Summer Said - Dov Lieber - Carrie Keller-Lynn - March 3, 2024

TEL AVIV—Hamas officials are in Cairo Sunday aiming to reach a deal in the next 48 hours that would see the release of hostages in exchange for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, according to Egyptian officials, a push to stop the fighting before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Negotiators believe Hamas and Israel are close to being able to strike a deal over the next few days, Egyptian officials said. Key issues have yet to be fully agreed upon, including which hostages and which prisoners would be released.?

Even if the two negotiating teams can agree, another major challenge remains: Hamas’s leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, hasn’t been in contact for at least a week, raising concerns that the man who can implement a deal won’t be reachable, Egyptian and Qatari officials say.

Israel is also refraining from sending its senior negotiating team to Cairo until it receives a list of hostages Hamas knows are alive and can be handed over in the event of a deal.?

“I demand to know in advance the names of all the hostages who will be included in the outline,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a Thursday news conference.?

Hamas is slated to hand over such a list on a Sunday, while Israel is meant to present a list of prisoners it will refuse to release, such as those convicted of planning or taking part in major terrorist attacks, Egyptian officials said.?

Israel gave Hamas a Ramadan deadline to return hostages held in Gaza or face a ground offensive in Rafah, a town on the border with Egypt where more than million displaced Gazans are currently seeking shelter. Ramadan, which begins this year around March 10, in recent years has been a flashpoint for violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories.

The last message sent to Hamas political leadership in Qatar from Sinwar said there should be no rush to secure a hostage deal, said people familiar with the discussions. They said Sinwar was hoping that an Israeli incursion over Ramadan would push Palestinians living in Israel and the West Bank to rise up against Israel.?

Adding to the urgency for all sides to strike a deal is the need to stave off famine inside Gaza, where the level of humanitarian aid able to be distributed across the enclave has plummeted due to the intensity of the conflict and widespread lawlessness, as well as by Israeli inspections at two land-border crossings.

Up to 15 children in Gaza have died from dehydration and malnutrition in recent days in northern Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital, Gaza’s health ministry said on Sunday. The ministry said six more children who were being treated for malnutrition and dehydration were in danger due to a lack of resources and electricity at the hospital.

Benny Gantz, a leading political rival to Netanyahu who is also a minister in Israel’s war cabinet, is slated to land Sunday in Washington, where he plans to meet on Monday with Vice President Kamala Harris and national security adviser Jake Sullivan.?

Gantz will discuss the issue of aid deliveries into Gaza as well as push the U.S. administration to pressure Hamas to accept the framework for a hostage release and temporary cease-fire deal that was agreed to by Israel during talks in Paris late in February.

The growing humanitarian crisis and lack of aid has garnered worldwide attention after a deadly aid-delivery attempt on Thursday in which Gaza health authorities say more than 100 Palestinians were killed.?

On Sunday, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the Israeli military’s chief spokesperson, said that a military probe concluded that the majority of the Palestinians were killed or injured due to trampling in a chaotic scene around the trucks holding the aid. Hagari said Israeli forces had opened fire at several individuals who had threateningly approached a group of soldiers who had already retreated from the aid convoy.

An Israeli military official previously said an initial estimate found Israeli soldiers killed fewer than 10 Palestinians who had approached Israeli forces.

Palestinian doctors say that many in the crowd were wounded by gunfire. Israeli officials say Palestinian gunmen also fired into the crowd, resulting in deaths.

On Saturday, three U.S. military aircraft dropped 38,000 ready-to-eat meals over southwestern Gaza, in an initial attempt to address a woeful shortage of food in the strip. The Jordanian air force released two airdrops of food over northern Gaza in what the U.S. termed a joint mission. The Israeli military said 21 airdrops have been coordinated as of Sunday.

Gantz’s trip to Washington underscores the tensions between Israel’s wartime leadership as the cabinet prepares to make important decisions over the hostage negotiations and the future of the war.?

Gantz only informed Netanyahu of the trip on Friday, after the agenda was set, according to an official familiar with the matter. Netanyahu was surprised by and “borderline angry” about the initiative, the official said.?

The public division of Israel’s leadership also comes amid increasing domestic unrest inside Israel.?

On Saturday night, thousands of protesters swarmed into Jerusalem at the end of a four-day march from an Israeli town near Gaza, demanding Netanyahu strike a deal for the release of the hostages. In Tel Aviv, thousands of protesters also demanded elections and the resignation of Netanyahu.?

Israel has significantly drawn down its forces inside Gaza over recent weeks, but the fighting continues to spread.

The Israeli military on Sunday announced it had carried out an “extensive series of strikes” in areas of southwestern Khan Younis, the city in Gaza’s south where the majority of the fighting in the enclave has been taking place in recent months and where Israel believed Hamas’s leadership has been hiding. The airstrikes precipitated a movement of ground forces into the area.?

Israeli officials have declined to comment on whether they believe Sinwar is still in Khan Younis.

The war in Gaza began with Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, according to Israel. Israel responded with bombing and a ground operation that have killed more than 30,000 people in Gaza, mostly women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities, whose figures don’t distinguish between civilians and militants.

Hopes for Gaza Truce Grow as Hamas Joins Talks in Cairo - WSJ

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One U.S. Ally’s Formula for Dealing With Trump: Pull Closer to America

Poland wanted American skin in the game in defending against Russia, so it went on a deal spree

By Daniel Michaels - Thomas Grove - March 2, 2024

WARSAW—Donald Trump’s recent comments that he would encourage Moscow to attack NATO members that “don’t pay” has sent shock waves through Europe, leaving leaders fearing they could be stuck alone to defend against a Russian assault.?

But Poland, a victim of repeated Russian aggression in the past century, has a response: Get closer to the U.S.?

For countries seeking ways to anticipate a Trump administration, Poland could offer something of an example. It has worked to ensure that Americans have skin in the game of defending against Russia—whoever inhabits the White House—by spending lavishly on American weapons systems and commercial technology.?

For Warsaw, it is the sort of dealmaking that could resonate with Trump.?

“He wants Europe to be the area dominated by American interests,” said President Andrzej Duda in an interview. “Because he is a businessman, he wants to spread American business.”

Poland over the past two years has agreed to buy as much as $50 billion in military equipment from the U.S., including Apache helicopters, advanced Himars rocket launchers and a new generation of airborne radar that operates from tethered blimps. It had already agreed to buy F-35 jet fighters.

Warsaw’s arms deals signed in the last fiscal year alone accounted for half of U.S. foreign military sales, according to State Department data, making it the world’s largest buyer of U.S. arms in the period.

Poland has also signed big business deals with leading U.S. companies, including chip maker Intel , which plans to build a $4.6 billion semiconductor plant in the Eastern European country. Most prominent among the deals is a planned nuclear-power plant, a project Poland has been negotiating with Westinghouse Electric since Trump was president.

Poles see the choice as a coldly rational decision that aligns their security interests with American economic interests.

“Let’s be honest, one of the reasons we consciously selected an American partner was…because this type of investment instantly generates much broader business development,” Duda said.

The reactor project “represents a 100-year partnership between the United States and Poland on energy security,” said Westinghouse Electric Chief Executive Patrick Fragman.?

Polish officials fear that shrinking U.S. support could leave NATO’s eastern front vulnerable, with their country the biggest target. Long wary of Russia, Poland has for years invested heavily in defense. This year the country will spend roughly double the level North Atlantic Treaty Organization members a decade ago agreed to be spending now.?

Poles think history shows they need strong allies—and that diplomatic pacts aren’t sufficient. After Germany and the Soviet Union invaded in 1939, defense pledges from Britain and France proved worthless. In 1945, the Allies let Stalin put Poland under Soviet domination. So Poland is appealing to American self-interest.

Most of Poland’s U.S. contracts were signed under the previous nationalist government, which sought to foster what it called a privileged partnership with the Trump administration alongside other European countries and in 2018 even proposed naming a local U.S. base Fort Trump.?

That government left power in December. The new centrist government has maintained strong U.S. ties while moving fast to rebuild bridges with the European Union after years of tensions. The EU on Thursday unlocked Poland’s access to more than $145 billion in budget funds that Brussels had blocked over concerns about the rule of law in the country.

The new government plans to maintain Poland’s large U.S. arms orders despite long delivery delays, said Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski.

“It would be helpful to speed up delivery times,” Sikorski said in an interview. Poland is meanwhile giving priority to developing drones, based on lessons from Ukraine, he said.

Duda, a self-described conservative who is aligned with the former government, said that Trump’s argument that European NATO members should spend at least 2% of their gross domestic product on defense, as agreed at a NATO summit in 2014, “makes sense.”

“For me, this is obvious,” he said, noting that Poland is spending roughly 4% of its GDP on defense—due to fear of what he termed “the threat of resurgent Russian imperialism,” and not because of threats from Trump.?

“Of course, we count on our NATO allies, primarily the U.S.A., but we know that this will be [just] support,” he said. Poles must “be able to defend ourselves, hence the sacrifices of the entire Polish society.”

The conflict in Ukraine came at a vulnerable time for Poland. The country was in the middle of military modernization, trying to upgrade from decades of using Soviet armaments. The transformation process made it easier for Warsaw to find the planes and tanks it sent to Ukraine, making it one of the biggest donors to Ukraine early in the war.

But those handouts also added to the urgency of ramping up procurement.?

While Poland has also signed deals with South Korea and Germany, its overwhelming preference for U.S. hardware is meant to tie Washington into a long-term relationship with Warsaw. But it also aims to provide maximum capability with U.S. forces in a crisis situation.

“All of Poland’s defense planners, from people with stars on their shoulders to military procurement people—everything is being done for maximum compatibility and interoperability” with U.S. armed forces, said Tony Housh, head of the American Chamber of Commerce in Poland and a former country representative for Northrop Grumman . He said the goal is that any U.S. forces sent from America “would fit seamlessly right into the eastern flank” with F-35s, Himars and Patriot air-defense systems.?

Investing in advanced U.S. military technology has been central to Warsaw’s two-pronged defensive strategy for a quarter-century. The deals give Poland some of the world’s most advanced military equipment, but they also give the U.S., which has a large and nationalistic Polish-American voting bloc, a vested interest in protecting Poland.

In 2002, the U.S. approved Poland’s purchase of F-16 jet fighters, days after Christmas that year, amplifying the holiday mood. A push by Warsaw in 2008 for the U.S. to station Patriots in Poland was only partly about fear of missile strikes. Warsaw wanted the systems because they would be operated by U.S. troops stationed in the country, putting Americans in harm’s way in any Russian attack.

Poland has viewed attracting U.S. investors as similarly cementing American interests in the fiercely pro-American country.

The U.S. is the second-biggest investor in Poland, behind only Germany, with which Poland shares a border. The deal with Intel to build a new plant in the western city of Wroclaw brings Poland into the U.S. company’s European supply chain, which includes another plant in Ireland and a planned one in Germany.

In 2021, Google chose Poland as the first site in Eastern Europe for its cloud storage system, from where it would be serving the rest of the region.?

The nuclear-power plant would hold significance beyond business and defense. In late 1990, less than one year after Poland formed the Soviet bloc’s first democratically elected government and helped spark the Berlin Wall’s collapse, Poland canceled a half-built Soviet reactor project. Rejecting the Russian-designed reactor represented a beacon of Poland’s swing to the West.

Today, an American reactor represents a beacon of Poland’s allegiance to the U.S. Westinghouse’s Fragman said the project would have a profound impact on Poland through economic growth, job creation and clean-energy production. Westinghouse is also establishing a regional engineering hub and engaging hundreds of Polish suppliers, “which will be critical to support additional projects across the region,” he said.

Duda said he isn’t worried that Trump would pull the U.S. from NATO or by his repeated comments praising Russian President Vladimir Putin.?

Trump “looks at politics through the prism of business,” he said, speaking before some of Trump’s most inflammatory recent comments on NATO.?

“I think he knows that Russia’s domination in Europe isn’t in the United States’s best interest,” said Duda. “It is not good business.”

One U.S. Ally’s Formula for Dealing With Trump: Pull Closer to America - WSJ

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