Israel has proposed that senior Hamas leaders be allowed to leave Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire agreement, two officials familiar with the ongoing international discussions told CNN.
The extraordinary proposal, which has not been previously reported, comes as Israel struggles to achieve its stated goal of completely destroying Hamas. Despite its nearly four-month war in Gaza, Israel has failed to capture or kill any of Hamas's most senior leaders in Gaza and has left around 70% of Hamas' fighting force intact, by its own estimates. From Israel.
Although it would give safe passage out of Gaza to the top Hamas leaders who orchestrated the October 7 attack, emptying Gaza of its leaders could weaken Hamas' control over the war-torn area while allowing Israel to continue tracking high-value targets abroad.
Senior Hamas officials are known to live in Doha, Qatar and the Lebanese capital, Beirut, among other places outside the Palestinian territories. An Israeli airstrike earlier this month killed a senior Hamas commander in Beirut.
Israel's suggestion that Hamas leaders could leave Gaza, although unlikely to be accepted by Hamas, has been discussed as part of broader ceasefire negotiations at least twice in recent weeks: once a month spent in Warsaw by Israel's intelligence chief, Mossad Director David Barnea, and then again this month in Doha with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, according to an official familiar with the discussions.
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