Israeli security officials hope Biden will push Netanyahu to drop some demands in cease-fire talks.

Some senior Israeli security officials who have grown frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s handling of cease-fire negotiations with Hamas are hoping that President Biden will convince him in a meeting on Thursday to drop some of his demands.

Israel’s defense agencies increasingly fear that Mr. Netanyahu will doom hopes for a cease-fire and hostage exchange if he continues to insist that Israeli forces must screen Palestinians for weapons as they move between northern and southern Gaza, according to four officials familiar with internal conversations about the matter who were not authorized to speak publicly because of the sensitivity of the discussions.

Earlier this year the Israeli military built a road south of Gaza City known as the Netzarim corridor that effectively divides Gaza in two. A May draft of a tentative cease-fire agreement that Israel had submitted would require its forces to withdraw from part of the corridor and allow unarmed people to cross it, permitting many displaced Gazans to return home.

But earlier this month, Mr. Netanyahu’s government reversed its position, and pushed to install Israeli checkpoints throughout the corridor to screen for weapons, the officials say.

Last week, Israeli news media reported that the Israeli defense minister and the head of the intelligence agency Mossad told cabinet ministers at a meeting that the demand would at the least delay a deal for releasing hostages, if not doom it altogether. But Mr. Netanyahu is also facing pressure from far-right religious parties that have threatened to dissolve his tenuous coalition government if Israeli forces withdraw from some parts of Gaza.

At least some senior Israeli security officials are banking on Mr. Biden to convince Mr. Netanyahu to stick to the earlier plan to allow Palestinians to pass through the Netzarim corridor without being screened for weapons, according to two people familiar with the internal conversations. They hope it will be among the sticking points in the negotiations that are raised at a White House meeting on Thursday afternoon between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Biden.

A spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office did not respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

On Wednesday, a senior U.S. administration official who briefed reporters on the planned meeting between Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Biden said the talks between Israel and Hamas militants for a cease-fire and hostage deal were “in the closing stages.”