US, Israeli Officials Travel to Egypt for Gaza Talks

Watch US, Israeli Officials Travel to Egypt for Gaza Talks - Bloomberg on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Dan, so many of these discussions, all of the discussions are happening behind closed doors.

00:03We don't have a lot of information in terms of where they are in the process, but perhaps the

00:08fact that some of these high-ranked officials, senior representatives from the Arab world and

00:13the U.S. are flying into Shad Mashiach is a positive sign? I think you're right. This is

00:19the third day of those talks. You have the principal negotiators and mediators converging

00:25on that Red Sea resort. These are busy men. They have other things to keep themselves

00:31busy. They also have at stake the credibility of their countries and the governments they

00:35represent. So one assumes they would not be coming out if they did not feel that these

00:39talks were going in the right direction. The right direction meaning an implementation

00:43of that Trump plan unveiled last week, a plan for ending this two-year-old war and, as he

00:50would put it, bringing peace to the Middle East. Very ambitious. Indeed, there's been

00:54little disclosure from any of the parties, with the exception of Hamas, perhaps not

00:59surprisingly, because the full Hamas delegation has been in Sharm since the outset. The comments

01:06have been a bit cryptic. One is a Hamas demand to have a guarantee, as we call it, that Israel

01:13would end the war as part of this deal. Hard to understand that, given that the text of

01:17the Trump plan speaks about a de facto and declared end of the war, the moment the first

01:23phase is undertaken, that being the freeing by Hamas of those 48 remaining hostages in

01:29Gaza. So it would appear that Hamas may be angling for a speedier withdrawal of Israeli

01:35forces from Gaza than that envisaged by the plan. The other issue is, as you noted, Hamas

01:40talking about a fair hostage exchange. This, I think, points to what Hamas would want, the

01:46people it would want to be on that roster of 1,950 Palestinian prisoners and detainees to go free

01:54as part of the Trump plan in exchange for those hostages. They're not necessarily right away. Israel

02:00is almost certain to balk at some names that Hamas might put on that list, specifically masterminds

02:06of suicide bombings by Hamas going back decades. So those could prove to be thorny issues. I imagine

02:12during the course of the day, as those principles come into Sharm, we'll know more.