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Netanyahu Is Blocking a Hostage Deal
Who’s to blame for the failure to bring Israeli hostages home safe? Israeli officials have been telling us for months it’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
With six Israeli hostages dead, one of them a US citizen, and massive Israeli protests against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raging in the country, a very public game of finger-pointing has ensued. Asked on Monday if Netanyahu was doing enough to secure the release of hostages still held by Hamas, President Joe Biden curtly answered, “No.” A stung Netanyahu struck back with his own public statement, reading out recent statements from US officials that praised Israel for working constructively toward an agreement and putting the onus on Hamas to accept its terms, insisting that Hamas was the real obstacle to a cease-fire and hostage-release deal. Who should we believe?
One answer is to listen to sources high up in government or involved in the talks from mediating countries like Egypt, the United States, and even Israel itself. For months, those voices have constantly told the media — often Israeli news outlets and establishment US newspapers exceedingly friendly to Israel — that the main obstacle to a cease-fire deal is Netanyahu himself, and that he has continuously inserted roadblocks and poison pills to sabotage negotiations as a way of staying in power.
“Do Everything to Prevent a Deal”
That includes over just the past few days, after the discovery of the bodies of the six Israeli hostages this past Saturday ignited Israeli anger at Netanyahu’s failure to bring them home.
As officials from mediating countries once more got on the phone to try to finally secure a deal, CNN reported, “a source familiar with the discussions” told the outlet that Netanyahu “torpedoed everything in one speech,” in which he reiterated his demand that Israel will permanently occupy the Philadelphi corridor, a slender strip of land along the border of Gaza and Egypt, a demand that has become the main sticking point in talks over the past month and a half.
Strangely, the quote carried the headline in major Israeli outlets like the Times of Israel, Haaretz, and Yedioth Ahronoth (better known by its web edition’s moniker Ynet), but was buried in the twenty-fourth paragraph of the original CNN report it came from.
The same day, Ynet put out its own report on the changes Netanyahu personally made to an earlier cease-fire proposal that, as it pointed out, had “received agreement to most of the conditions from Hamas.” Netanyahu’s new proposal, which had been presented to mediators on July 27, made “dramatic changes and additions” that “completely changed the picture of the negotiations,” the newspaper stated.
That built on a separate report by the newspaper from two days earlier, which featured this damning verdict on the altered proposal from someone Ynet described as “a senior security official who has been quoted here many times, and who was so bleakly and tragically right in all his predictions”:
History will one day judge this document very harshly. . . . At the top of the document, it is written that it is a “clarification document,” but in my opinion the most appropriate nickname for it is the “bloody document” — because its pages are stained with the blood of the six abductees who were murdered in a tunnel in Rafah. If it weren’t for the deliberate sabotage contained in the document to prevent a deal, there is a good chance that they would have been released already a month ago and are here with us alive.
The source went on to call the document “an attempt by [Netanyahu] to torpedo the positive moment in the negotiations,” and that it was “created specifically to prevent” a hostage-release deal — a charge, the newspaper stated, that was “significantly reinforced in conversations with other officials related to the negotiations” and from other negotiating documents. Based on those sources, Ynet characterized Netanyahu’s Philadelphi demand as the origin of the current negotiating impasse, and reported that Israeli negotiators are supremely unhappy with the document, “which in their opinion destroys any chance of an agreement.”
Days earlier, when the hostages’ bodies were discovered, what appears to be that same senior Israeli security official (based on the identical description used by the paper) told Ynet that Netanyahu and others were deliberately negotiating in a way to ensure the war doesn’t actually end. While Hamas was obviously most directly to blame for the hostages’ deaths, the official told the paper, in truth
what leads to the death of many abductees . . . [is] the Israeli refusal in practice, there is no other way to call it, to sign an abductee deal that will return all the survivors home and end the war in Gaza.
The entire Israeli military and security establishment had no problem with withdrawing from the Philadelphi corridor, the source told the paper. Instead, the source said, the deal was completely in Netanyahu’s hands, but he “will do everything to prevent a deal.”
Before that, there were two separate reports on an Israeli security cabinet meeting on August 29, one from the Times of Israel, the other in Axios authored by the well-sourced Israeli journalist Barak Ravid. Both reports offered a surprisingly detailed play-by-play of the meeting that told the same story: of a heated argument between Netanyahu and his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who accused Netanyahu of forcing the Philadelphi demand on a military that didn’t think it was necessary, and that Israel had to choose between staying in Philadelphi and getting the hostages back — only to be isolated and outvoted thanks to Netanyahu.
The Times of Israel report was particularly damning. For instance, when Gallant asked Netanyahu point blank what he would say if Hamas gave him an ultimatum that he could either stay in Philadelphi or bring back the hostages, the report stated, “Netanyahu responded that the imperative to keep the [Israel Defense Forces] at the corridor was of crucial importance to the state.” In other words, as the paper’s headline put it, Netanyahu made explicit that he “prioritizes Philadelphi over hostages.”
Keen-eyed readers who go through both reports will not find the Israeli cabinet so much as mentioning Hamas, nor listing any obstacle they’ve thrown up in the way of an agreement — only a discussion about whether Israel should take the deal and bring their people home, or push for more concessions from the terrorist group, with the latter view winning out.
There is simply no other conclusion anyone can make from reading the words of high-level officials contained in these recent reports than that Netanyahu could strike a deal bringing the hostages back any time he wants but is doing everything he can to avoid doing so. But much of this has not been reported in the US media, and few Americans consume the Israeli press.
“Do Everything to Prevent a Deal”
“Netanyahu Does Not Want Peace”
It would be wrong to think any of this is a recent development. We can go back and see almost identical claims by high-level sources in almost identical pieces of reporting going back many months.
Take the works of this “former senior intelligence source” who sits on the team of one of the Israeli negotiators, as quoted in a March 28 Haaretz report:
There are increasing signs that [Netanyahu’s] doing almost everything possible to postpone, delay, and ruin the chance of a deal to release the hostages in exchange for terrorists.
That report went on to disclose various actions Netanyahu had taken to undermine negotiations — including avoiding or delaying the convening of the war cabinet, various public statements aimed at tainting productive discussion, and excluding negotiators from taking part in the talks — and that Netanyahu’s position was at odds with Israel’s military chiefs.
Here is what the New York Times reported on May 5 about what its reporter had been told by an Israeli official requesting anonymity regarding Netanyahu’s absurd insistence that as part of any cease-fire deal, Israel would have the right to resume firingafter a short break, something the paper then called “the main obstacle in the talks”:
that Israel and Hamas were closer to a deal a couple of days ago, but that Mr. Netanyahu’s statements about Rafah had compelled Hamas to harden its demands in an attempt to ensure that Israeli forces won’t enter the city.
Here is former Israeli negotiator Gershon Baskin a day later, when Netanyahu ordered the invasion of Rafah that the entire world correctly warned would be a disaster:
It seems that Netanyahu may be trying to sabotage the deal even before the cabinet gets the details and votes on it. The Israeli military operation going on right now (almost 11:00 pm Israel time) is clearly aimed at pushing Hamas to withdraw its agreement for a ceasefire. Netanyahu, it appears, is once again putting his own political self interests ahead of the country and ahead of the Israeli hostages.
Look at what Biden himself said on June 4 — not in a private conversation that was later leaked, but in a high-profile foreign policy interview with Time magazine — when asked if Netanyahu was prolonging the war for his own political reasons: “There is every reason for people to draw that conclusion.”
"Netanyahu could strike a deal bringing the hostages back any time he wants, but is doing everything he can to avoid doing so."
Or look at what various officials said about Netanyahu’s issuing of four “nonnegotiable” demands on July 7, which included refusing to return those that Israel itself was holding prisoner (a provision that had been part of earlier versions of the deal) and a clause that would let Israel “return to fighting until its war aims are achieved.”
Those demands came just as talks were set to restart, and just after Hamas made a major concession: that it would agree to a deal without an upfront Israeli commitment to a “complete and permanent cease-fire” in the first phase of hostage releases — something even the Biden administration had called a “significant adjustment” on the group’s part.
Here, for instance, is what the Times of Israel reported:
A senior official from one of the countries mediating between Israel and Hamas also accused Netanyahu of trying to sabotage the deal. . . . [and said] the nonnegotiable demand to resume fighting after the first stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal publicized by Netanyahu’s office hit at the most sensitive aspect of the ongoing negotiations.
Here is what Haaretz reported:
Another source warned that Israel’s new demands are expected to delay the completion of the negotiations, and that it was not clear whether Hamas would accede to these new demands.
“Hamas has already agreed to the latest position presented by Israel. But in Friday’s meeting, Israel presented some new points it demands that Hamas accept,” said a source familiar with the details.
Here is how a “security source” described Netanyahu’s move to Ynet:
Inappropriate conduct that will harm the chance of returning the abductees home. There is also a question of timing here. . . . If this is the conduct, the abductees will not return.
An unnamed Israeli security official told Israel’s Channel 12 about it: “Netanyahu pretends that he wants a deal but is working to torpedo it.”
Or look at the various responses to Netanyahu’s July 11 announcement, at that point introduced for the first time in the course of talks, that Israel must permanently occupy the Philadelphi corridor in any final deal, characterized by multiple Israeli reports as Netanyahu “toughening” or “hardening” Israel’s position in the talks. This, for instance, is what one source close to the negotiations toldChannel 12:
This is a demand that will prevent a deal. In the best case, it is an obstacle that will make the continuation [of talks] more difficult, and in the worst case, it is aimed as a spoke in the negotiations’ wheel and at eliminating the ability to reach a deal. . . . Prime Minister Netanyahu added demands that deviate from the agreements with the mediators.
This is what a “former senior Egyptian official with knowledge of the negotiations” told the Washington Postabout it: “Netanyahu does not want peace. That is all. He will find excuses . . . to prolong this war until 5 November [the date of the US election].”
This is what Reuters reported based on what “two Egyptian security sources” told the outlet:
According to the sources, the Israeli delegation would give approvals on several conditions under discussion, but then come back with amendments or introduce new conditions that risked sinking the negotiations.
The sources said the mediators viewed the “contradictions, delays in responses, and the introduction of new terms contrary to what was previously agreed” as signs the Israeli side viewed the talks as a formality aimed at influencing public opinion.
Even the right-wing Jerusalem Post agreed, reporting that unnamed sources had told the paper that “Netanyahu is actively sabotaging the possibility of any hostage deal, in order to prevent the collapse of his government,” by introducing the Philadelphi corridor demand at the eleventh hour.
Those sources also “ridiculed” the new demands “as irrelevant from a security perspective,” speculated that the prime minister was “more confident that [Donald] Trump will win reelection and feels less pressure” to abide by Biden’s demands, and believed that “Hamas’s huge concession could have led to the deal being wrapped up this week and by next week, and a bunch of hostages would already have returned to their homes.”
This was backed by a later, July 28 report in the New York Times, which was told by six Israeli officials that Netanyahu
was the main reason for Israel’s hardened stance at the Rome talks, and that top security officials are pushing for the prime minister to show greater flexibility in order to secure a deal. Mr. Netanyahu’s room for maneuver is limited by the members of his right-wing coalition government; some of them oppose a truce that would allow Hamas to survive the war intact and have threatened to bring down the government if their wishes are not met.
“The Obstacles Are Coming From Netanyahu”
Days later, there was probably the clearest show of Netanyahu’s unseriousness toward the talks, when he assassinated the negotiator across the table from him: the more moderate Hamas official Ismail Haniyeh. The reckless and wildly illegal move was widely denounced, including by officials from countries involved in the talks. That included the Qatari prime minister, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani, who asked, “How can mediation succeed when one party assassinates the negotiator on the other side?”
As well as the Egyptian foreign ministry, which in a statement charged that:
The coincidence of this regional escalation with the lack of progress in the ceasefire negotiations in Gaza increases the complexity of the situation and indicates the absence of Israeli political will to calm it down.
And even Biden himself. According to a US official who spoke to Axios, the US president complained to Netanyahu that he had gone ahead with the assassination after they had spoken only a week earlier about securing a deal, and told him:
We are at an inflection point . . . we need to do everything to end the war and reach regional stability, even if the deal is not perfect. Hamas wants the deal right now. It might change.
No wonder that “three officials from mediating countries” toldthe Times of Israel in early August that the Israeli negotiating team had lost credibility. As one of the officials, a diplomat, told the paper:
It’s clear that these are all delaying tactics; every time we get close to a deal, more attacks happen. Haniyeh was someone who wanted a deal. Right now, the obstacles are coming from Netanyahu.
That same diplomat said that “the Israeli negotiators would tell the mediators one thing in the room and then Netanyahu would say the opposite in public,” setting the talks back, while another of the officials alleged that Israeli negotiators would repeatedly assure mediators which conditions the Israeli government was prepared to accept, only to talk them back after speaking with Netanyahu. Still another revealed that Netanyahu had rejected a Hamas offer made days after October 7 to release all the civilian hostages in return for a week-long pause in fighting.
As a result of this behavior, Channel 12 reported, Netanyahu got into a shouting match with his own security chiefs, who questioned if Netanyahu actually wanted to make a deal and urged him to take the one on the table, only for the Israeli prime minister to call them “weak” and tell them to pressure Hamas instead of him. It led the security chiefs to conclude Netanyahu didn’t want an agreement, according to Channel 12, with one unnamed source telling the outlet, “He has given up on the hostages.”
Accounts like these have continued throughout late August regarding Netanyahu’s Philadelphi demand, leading up to last Saturday’s discovery of the executed hostages.
An August 20 Haaretz report, for instance, quoted two sources who said that Netanyahu was “once again sabotaging the talks” and “consistently undermining the negotiations and delaying a deal,” even rejecting proposals from the Israeli defense establishment for how to withdraw from Philadelphi. A senior US official traveling with Secretary of State Antony Blinken then complained “that maximalist statements like this are not constructive to getting a cease-fire deal across the finish line and they certainly risk the ability” to move forward with negotiations. Last week on August 28, “a source involved in the deal” told Haaretz that “unless there is some flexibility on these issues” — including Netanyahu’s insistence on an ongoing Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor — “it is doubtful that we will be able to secure the release of the hostages.”
This went all the way up to yesterday, when the Washington Post reported that nine current and former officials from mediating countries agreed that Netanyahu’s Philadelphi demand was the chief obstacle to a hostage deal, with one Israeli official “venting” to the paper:
We could’ve saved them. Hamas committed the crime and should be held accountable, but my government had a responsibility to do whatever it takes to save them, and it failed them and their families. We owe them an apology.
Murderous Absurdity
This is not just one, or two, or even three reports. It is more than two dozen of them, over the past six months, across a variety of both Israeli and US establishment outlets, all saying the same thing: that Netanyahu is the primary obstacle to a cease-fire deal, has been systematically sabotaging any prospect of peace, and cares far more about keeping his governing coalition together — and, therefore, clinging to political power — than he does about getting the hostages back home, confident that he can simply hang on until the Democrats lose to Trump in November.
It’s hard to say what’s more absurd: that there’s any doubt remaining about why a Gaza cease-fire deal that the Biden administration is reportedly desperate for can’t be struck, or that the Biden administration continues to willingly prop up and arm the man everyone involved knows is its leading saboteur.
(c) 2024, Jacobin
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