U.S. Officials Try to Advance Israel’s Cease-Fire Talks With Hezbollah and Hamas

William Burns, the C.I.A. director, made a last-ditch attempt to move Gaza talks along before U.S. elections next week.

Top Biden administration negotiators visited the Middle East on Thursday for a last diplomatic drive before the American election, though hopes were not high for quick agreements to pause the fighting.

With Israel battling Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and a top American negotiator, met with officials in Cairo on Thursday, including the Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah el-Sisi. At the same time, President Biden’s Middle East coordinator, Brett McGurk, and his de facto envoy on the conflict with Hezbollah, Amos Hochstein, held talks in Israel with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and with Yoav Gallant, the Israeli defense minister.

The purpose of the meetings was to de-escalate the wars in Gaza and Lebanon, according to statements by some of the governments involved. But progress in cease-fire talks seems unlikely in the coming days, with the election looming on Tuesday in the United States, and the various sides expressing a reluctance to compromise.

Officials briefed on Israel’s internal thinking, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, have said that Mr. Netanyahu is waiting to see the election results before committing to a diplomatic trajectory. And Hamas has rejected proposals for a temporary truce in Gaza, saying it will only consider a permanent end to the fighting.

In Cairo, Mr. Burns and Mr. el-Sisi discussed “ways to push negotiations forward” toward a cease-fire and the exchange of hostages held in Gaza for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, a statement from the Egyptian leader’s office said. About 100 hostages captured in the Hamas attack in Israel last October remain in Gaza, and Israeli officials believe about two-thirds are still alive.

Earlier in the week, during talks among envoys from Israel, the United States and the two countries that mediate for Hamas, Egypt and Qatar, possible proposals emerged for an initial, temporary cease-fire in Gaza that would lead to the return of a small group of hostages.

Mr. Burns’s discussions in Cairo were expected to focus on refinements to those scaled-down proposals, which American officials hope could prod both Israel and Hamas to at least soften their positions and allow bargaining to resume in earnest after months of false starts.

Multiple versions of a potential Gaza proposal are still under discussion. One would release female hostages along with male captives over 50 in return for a set number of Palestinian prisoners, according to a person briefed on the discussions, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. In that version, the fighting in Gaza would pause for some time, but likely less than the six weeks envisioned in a previous deal negotiators had been pushing.

In another proposed deal, Hamas would release four hostages over roughly 10 days, according to a second official briefed on the negotiations.

Mr. Gallant’s office said he and the U.S. envoys had discussed the conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the efforts to free the hostages.

Mr. Burns, Mr. Hochstein and Mr. McGurk departed the region after the meetings, and a U.S. official said that the discussions in Israel focused on not only on reaching a cease-fire in Lebanon but also Iran, Gaza and efforts to secure the release of hostages.

But officials in Washington and the Middle East remain pessimistic that Hamas would accept any of the new deals. Hamas officials have repeatedly said they would only consider a deal that permanently ends the war — a stance that Taher el-Nunu, a Hamas spokesman, reiterated on Thursday.

“Hamas supports a permanent end to the war, not a temporary one,” he said in an interview with Agence France-Presse.

Some U.S. officials believe that Hamas leaders, like some Israeli officials, see waiting as advantageous. Israel’s longstanding conflict with Hezbollah, which reignited when the Lebanon-based armed group began firing on Israeli positions last October in solidarity with Hamas in Gaza, has ballooned from a regular but relatively restrained exchange of fire into Israeli ground operations and airstrikes inside Lebanon.

The war there has steadily expanded over the last month. Israel has hit the capital, Beirut, and cities like Baalbek far from its border, and said on Thursday that it hit Hezbollah targets in southern Lebanon. Lebanon’s health ministry said had killed and injured paramedics on Thursday, and with four civil defense dead.

Hezbollah, too, has continued attacks. On Thursday, local officials in Metula, in northern Israel, said that projectiles fired from Lebanon had struck an agricultural area, killing four foreign workers and an Israeli farmer.

A separate rocket strike killed two people in an olive grove, according to Israel’s emergency service. The attacks across the border have forced tens of thousands of people in Israel and more than a million in Lebanon to evacuate their homes.

After Mr. Netanyahu’s meeting with the U.S. officials, his office released a statement focused on the conflict with Hezbollah, emphasizing Israel’s need to “thwart any threat to its security from Lebanon, in a way that will return our residents safely to their homes.” The statement did not mention Gaza.

On Wednesday, a draft cease-fire proposal to address the fighting with Hezbollah was published by Israeli news media, prompting a U.S. National Security Council spokesman, Sean Savett, to warn that such reports should be viewed with skepticism.

“There are many reports and drafts circulating,” he said in a statement. “They do not reflect the current state of negotiations.”

The draft suggested that Hezbollah would withdraw from the Israel-Lebanon border in accordance with a United Nations Security Council resolution enacted in 2006 that was never implemented. It also suggested that the Lebanese military, which has been sidelined by Hezbollah in southern Lebanon in recent decades, would fill the void, preventing Hezbollah from rearming.

Analysts said that Hezbollah would balk at that arrangement, suggesting that it would be unlikely to gain traction.

“It’s too early to discuss these points, and I think it won’t be accepted by Hezbollah,” said Kassem Kassir, an analyst close to Hezbollah.

Myra Noveck and Hwaida Saad contributed reporting.

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