A bridge too far? Blinken’s desperate bid for a hostage-ceasefire deal

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

It’s a little confusing.

On Friday in Doha, at the end of two days of talks between Israel’s top negotiators and American, Qatari and Egyptian officials on a potential hostages-for-ceasefire agreement, the mediators announced that the US had drawn up a “bridging proposal” that closes the “remaining gaps” between Israel and Hamas “in the manner that allows for a swift implementation of the deal.”

This bridging proposal, they said in a joint statement, had been delivered to Israel and to Hamas — which did not participate in the talks, but was present in Doha. In a briefing later Friday, the White House referred to it as a “final bridging proposal.”

On Monday, the indefatigable US Secretary of State Antony Blinken held three hours of talks with Benjamin Netanyahu, at the end of which the prime minister issued a one-sentence statement pledging Israel’s “commitment to the current American proposal.” Evidently, few people believe much of what Netanyahu says these days because, The Times of Israel apart, the prime minister’s declared acceptance of the proposal was barely reported in Israel or abroad.

Several hours later, however, at a press conference in Tel Aviv, Blinken himself stated explicitly that Netanyahu was indeed on board. At their “very constructive meeting,” the secretary said, Netanyahu “confirmed to me that Israel accepts the bridging proposal” offered by the US last week in Doha “to try to bridge the gaps that remain between the parties.” The secretary stressed the point: “He supports it.”

What remained, Blinken went on, was for Hamas to give its consent — “It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same,” he said. After that, the parties, with the help of the mediators, would need to “come together and complete the process of reaching clear understandings about how they’ll implement the commitments that they’ve made under this agreement.”

That wording on the transition from approval of the bridging proposal to negotiating its implementation, one might note, was less than linear. And it wasn’t much more direct when Blinken tried to explain a second time: “The next important step is for Hamas to say yes,” he repeated, “and then, in the coming days, for all of the expert negotiators to get together to work on clear understandings on implementing the agreement.”

But the bottom line seemed plain. The US, backed by Qatar and Egypt, had presented a “bridging proposal” to close the gaps between Israel and Hamas that had held up a new deal for more than eight months since the weeklong truce in November. Israel had endorsed the new proposal. If Hamas were to do the same, the effort would advance toward implementation.

Clouds gather

Since Monday evening, however, this relatively clear picture has clouded over. Unlike the late May Israeli proposal on which subsequent negotiations have been based, which has been published (by ToI here), the “final bridging proposal” has not.

Confusing, even contradictory reports have emerged on what it may contain — including, importantly, whether it accommodates all, some or none of the four nonnegotiable demands Netanyahu has been reiterating in recent weeks: for an ongoing Israeli presence on the Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt border to prevent Hamas rearming; for a mechanism to prevent armed fighters returning from southern to northern Gaza across the Netzarim Corridor; for the release of the largest possible number of living hostages in the first six-week phase of the deal, and for Israel’s right to resume fighting until Hamas is destroyed.

On the face of it, it would seem unthinkable that Netanyahu would have accepted the American bridging proposal if those demands were not accommodated. And indeed, the prime minister reportedly told a meeting Tuesday with relatives of soldiers slain on October 7 and of hostages that, for a start, “Israel won’t leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances.”

But it would also seem unthinkable that Hamas, which has been unyielding in its demand for a permanent ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, would accept such terms. Indeed, Hamas’s officials have issued several statements rejecting the American proposal, and are also now disputing the widely reported assertion of recent weeks that it was prepared to implement the first phase of the deal, in which it aims to secure the release of large numbers of the most dangerous Palestinian terrorists from Israel’s jails, without an upfront Israeli commitment to a permanent end of the war. Yahya Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 invasion and slaughter in southern Israel who is now effectively the sole voice of Hamas, has yet to offer his personal response from the depths of Gaza, but is widely expected to confirm that the proposal is a nonstarter.

Curiously, however, while the mediators on Friday depicted the “bridging proposal” as their formula to close the gaps, the White House called it “final,” and Blinken on Monday underlined that Netanyahu had accepted and it was “now incumbent on Hamas to do the same,” the secretary in Doha on Tuesday called for “maximum flexibility – from the Israeli government and also from Hamas’s leadership.”

His full quote, which has not been widely reported, specified that he was making this request in the context of work on implementing the agreement: He said Hamas “should be prepared to endorse [the bridging proposal], just as Israel has endorsed it. And then the critical thing is getting clear understandings on implementation of the agreement, and there are some complicated pieces of business that are involved there.  That’s exactly why it’s so important that the negotiators who are working the details of this have maximum flexibility – from the Israeli Government and also from Hamas’s leadership – so that we can actually bring this to a conclusion, bring it over the finish line.”

But that appears to be a case of putting the cart before the horse. In theory, no further flexibility is required from Israel as regards the bridging proposal — since, whatever it contains, Israel has backed it. But tremendous and unlikely flexibility is required from Hamas before anybody can get moving on negotiating the terms for implementation, since Hamas has yet to accept the bridging proposal and is showing every sign of rejecting it.

What might be going on

Did the US go further than Qatar and Egypt would have wanted in Netanyahu’s direction when drawing up the terms of the bridging proposal? That, reportedly, is what Netanyahu’s own negotiators have been telling him.

Specifically, according to multiple Hebrew media reports, they returned from Doha last weekend to deliver the good news that the US had moved closer to Israel’s positions, but also stressed that he would have to give ground on the Philadelphi Corridor deployment or there would otherwise be no deal.

The Egyptian and Qatari mediators, they reportedly made clear, wouldn’t even press Hamas full-force to accept the bridging proposal as it stands. (Not that Qatar or Egypt have much leverage these days over a Hamas that, in choosing Sinwar as its overall leader, essentially pledged allegiance to Iran.)

To which Netanyahu reportedly responded that Israel’s ongoing presence along the border was a “strategic” imperative, and that Israel needed to control all access to Gaza or face the inevitable revival of Hamas. If it came down to a choice between Philadelphi and a deal, Netanyahu reportedly told them, he’d prefer Philadelphi.

Those Israeli negotiators are also Israel’s security chiefs — the head of the Mossad, the head of the Shin Bet, and a senior point man representing the IDF — and they have reportedly assured Netanyahu that all four of his nonnegotiable demands can be at least partially accommodated. At Philadelphi, for instance, they have reportedly argued that Israel can secure terms under which it monitors what plays out along the border during the crucial, first six-week phase of the deal, and that any attempts by Hamas to bring in weaponry would be regarded by the mediators as a violation that would justify the IDF’s immediate intervention. Indeed, that would remain the case as the deal progressed, if it progressed, and beyond.

Some reports in the past two days have claimed that Blinken recognizes that the bridging proposal is anything but the last word; that as he said in Doha on Tuesday, “these things sometimes take more time than you want”; that he has at least staved off Iran’s threatened revenge against Israel for the killing (by Iranians?) of Hamas’s leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran three weeks ago, and enabled the Democratic National Convention to get going without Gaza too prominent a global headline.

Danny Elgarat, whose brother Itzik is one of the now 105 hostages from October 7 still held captive in Gaza, takes a very different view. In an Army Radio interview on Wednesday morning, Elgarat proclaimed that Netanyahu, having given the US his okay on the bridging proposal, is “no longer relevant.”

In Elgarat’s assessment, the Americans have recognized that the prime minister is a potential saboteur of any deal. They’re giving him an alibi, Elgarat further asserted without evidence, in that they’ve told him they’d disengage from the region if there’s no deal and escalated hostilities, which would mean “collective suicide” for Israel, and they will now move to get the deal done come what may.

Pushed by reporters in Doha on Tuesday night about Netanyahu’s insistence on an ongoing Israeli presence at Phialdephi and his other restated demands, Blinken indeed sounded what might be termed politely dismissive: “The United States does not accept any long-term occupation of Gaza by Israel,” he said first. “More specifically, the agreement is very clear on the schedule and the locations of IDF withdrawals from Gaza, and Israel has agreed to that…

“I can’t speak to what [Netanyahu’s] quoted as saying,” Blinken went on. “I can just speak to what I heard from him directly yesterday, when we spent three hours together, including, again, Israel’s endorsement of the bridging proposal and thus the detailed plan. And that plan, among other things, as I said, includes a very clear schedule and locations for withdrawals.”

The other side

You might think Netanyahu would regard the return of the falling number of living hostages, not just an IDF presence on the Philadelphi Corridor, as a “strategic” issue for Israel and its capacity to emerge from the ongoing national nightmare.

You might think he would regard the need to tackle Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah — with its battle-tested army, extensive tunnel networks and vast missile arsenal largely intact, and Israel’s actual northern border being pushed inexorably south by Hassan Nasrallah’s incessant fire — as an urgent strategic imperative. You might even think some of Netanyahu’s most obdurate coalition partners would recognize those priorities too. (No, forget that; the likes of Itamar Ben Gvir are too busy stirring up the entire Muslim world against Israel by encouraging Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and indulging vicious West Bank settler attacks on Palestinians.)

But ultimately, whether Netanyahu is genuinely on board with the US plan, and whether the US is resolutely determined to hammer a deal through this time even if he isn’t, there is a second side to this equation: the Hamas terrorist organization, indisputably overseen by Sinwar, the architect of the October 7 massacre, and hellbent on Israel’s destruction.

At his press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday, Blinken declared: “So what I would say to Hamas and to its leadership is if it genuinely cares about the Palestinian people that it purports to somehow represent, then it will say yes to this agreement, and it will work on clear understandings about how to implement it.  Because the single, quickest, best, most effective way to relieve the terrible suffering of the Palestinians that was instigated by Hamas’s attack on October 7th and the war that ensued is to complete this agreement. So that’s really the question. Is Hamas, is its leadership, actually looking out for Palestinian children, women, and men who are suffering at this very moment in Gaza? And if it is, it will agree.”

But the bitter, obvious truth is that, no, Hamas does not “genuinely care about the Palestinian people,” and no, it is not “actually looking out for Palestinian children, women, and men who are suffering at this very moment in Gaza.” It is, rather, determined to destroy Israel — a goal, moreover, that Hamas and its considerable, despicable array of loyalists and supporters in Gaza and beyond would argue serves the wider Palestinian cause and justifies almost any sacrifice.

And Hamas, as Blinken must know, will not take any deal that Sinwar assesses would definitively thwart that avowed genocidal ambition.