CIA Director Bill Burns said Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar is facing increasing pressure from his own leaders to end the Gaza war.

CNN
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The CIA estimated that the Hamas leader in Gaza, Yahya SinwarCIA Director Bill Burns said at a closed-door conference on Saturday that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is under increasing pressure from his military leaders to accept a ceasefire and end the war with Israel, according to a source who attended the conference.

Sinwar, the main architect of the war. October 7 Massacre Burns told the conference that Netanyahu in Israel is “not worried about his own death” but is facing pressure to take blame for the enormity of the suffering in Gaza, according to the source.

US intelligence officials believe Sinwar is hiding in tunnels under his hometown of Khan Younis in Gaza, and is the main decision-maker for Hamas on whether to accept the deal.

Burns, who has been conducting frantic negotiations for months as the Biden administration’s point person, said the Israeli government and Hamas should seize this moment, more than nine months after the war began, to reach a ceasefire.

But Burns said the internal pressures Sinwar is now facing are new over the past two weeks, including calls from his top commanders who are tired of fighting, according to the participant, who asked not to be identified to discuss the informal conference.

The CIA director was speaking at Allen & Company’s annual summer retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, sometimes called the “Summer camp for billionaires” Because of the dazzling guest list of tech moguls, media giants and top government officials who are invited to the secretive week-long event.

The CIA declined to comment.

The increasing pressure on Sinwar comes as Hamas and Israel have agreed to a framework agreement proposed by President Joe Biden. Developed In late May, which US officials said was being used as the basis for an agreement to end the fighting.

Burns had just returned from his latest trip last week to the Middle East to try to advance negotiations on a ceasefire in Gaza and a hostage deal, where he met with his counterparts from Qatar and Egypt, as well as the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency.

Burns said on Saturday that there were “fragile prospects” and that the chances of reaching a ceasefire were greater than they had been in the months following a brief truce that saw dozens of hostages released in November. But he stressed that the final stage of negotiations is always difficult.

The renewed efforts come after previous discussions collapsed last May following a similar series of meetings and travel by Burns in the region.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under enormous domestic pressure to strike a deal that would return the remaining hostages in Gaza to their homes. Thousands of Israeli protesters have been regularly taking to the streets of Tel Aviv, demanding that the government focus on returning the hostages rather than the military campaign.

“There are still gaps to close, but we are making progress, and the trend is positive,” Biden said Thursday. “And I am determined to get this deal done and end this war, which must end now.”

The Israeli campaign on Gaza has killed more than 38,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza health ministry. Thousands are believed to be still missing under the rubble, and hundreds of thousands face disease, starvation and lack of shelter, according to aid groups.

Aside from the sheer volume of details being worked out in the potential deal, talks are routinely slowed by the difficulties of getting messages to and from Sinwar as Israel tries to hunt him down.

Of Hamas’s three most senior leaders in Gaza, only one is believed to have been found and killed by Israel: Marwan Issa, the group’s second-in-command. The group’s military wing commander, Mohammed Deif, was targeted in an Israeli airstrike on Saturday that killed nearly 100 Palestinians and wounded hundreds more, according to Palestinian health officials.

Neither Israel nor the United States has been able to determine whether the targeting of Al-Daif was successful.

US officials believe Sinwar no longer wants to rule Gaza, and that Israel and Hamas have agreed to an “interim rule” plan that would begin in the second phase of the ceasefire in which neither would control Gaza, a US official told CNN.

Qatar has also made it clear that it will do so. eviction US officials say Hamas’ political leadership may withdraw from its old foreign base if the militant group does not sign on to the plan.

In the Hamas communications that he recently witnessed and reported on, Associated PressSenior Hamas leaders inside Gaza have called on outside figures from the movement to accept Biden’s ceasefire proposal, citing the heavy casualties and dire conditions in Gaza.

Perhaps this is an indication of Hamas’s keenness to end the fighting, as it recently backed away from its main demand that the ceasefire agreement include guarantees that it will lead to a permanent ceasefire, a sticking point in the talks that Israel has long rejected.

Netanyahu insisted that any agreement must allow Israel to return to fighting until its war goals are achieved.

This means that a temporary pause in the fighting may begin, which could lead to the release of some Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, before Israel resumes its military operations.

Biden’s proposed framework says a permanent ceasefire will be negotiated during the first phase of the cessation of hostilities, which will last as long as the negotiations continue.

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

“There are tough issues that need to be resolved,” a source familiar with the talks told CNN after Burns’ meetings in Doha. A second source agreed, saying “there is still a long way to go.”