Meeting hostage families in US, Netanyahu says conditions for deal ‘ripening’

WASHINGTON — After landing in the US on Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the families of Israelis held hostage by Hamas that the conditions for a deal for their release were “ripening.”

Meeting with them in the US capital ahead of a speech to a joint session of Congress on Wednesday, the premier credited the intense military pressure Israel was exerting on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

“We are determined to get them all back. The conditions to get them back are ripening,” he said, “for the simple reason that we are applying very, very strong pressure, very strong, on Hamas.

“We are seeing a certain change and I think that this change will continue to get bigger. And we intend to do it — this is a war objective,” added Netanyahu.

“We are also seeing that the enemy’s spirit is starting to break,” he said.

Sitting next to his wife Sara and government hostage pointman Gal Hirsch, Netanyahu told the families that if Israel stands firm, “we can reach a deal.”

“I say at the outset that this will be a process — unfortunately it’s not all at once, there will be stages,” he continued, “but I believe that we can move a deal forward and maintain the means of pressure that can bring about the release of the others.” The reference to plural stages was notable amid reports that he is only interested in adhering to the first stage of the deal under discussion or believes that only the first stage will come to fruition.

Netanyahu insisted he was doing everything he could to bring back the hostages while protecting Israel’s very existence. “In no circumstance am I willing to give up on victory over Hamas,” he emphasized. “If we let up, we will be in danger from all of Iran’s evil axis.”

Netanyahu also reportedly indicated that he would like more time to squeeze Hamas further in order to improve Israel’s negotiating position — a stance the hostage families repeatedly said Monday that they could not accept, especially given that two more captives were confirmed dead by Israeli authorities hours earlier.

According to further, unconfirmed quotes reported on Channel 12 news on Monday, Netanyahu also said that Israel “can achieve all its war goals — victory over Hamas and the return of all the hostages. Israel is in existential danger.”

He was also quoted saying, “I faced immense domestic and international pressure to end the military pressure and not to enter Rafah, and yet now we see signs of major cracks in Hamas, which will yield a better deal. There are aspects that we won’t agree to, because they would prevent the continuation of the return of all the hostages. I also seek to maximize the number of living hostages who will be freed in the first stage, and I won’t go into details on that. We’re closer to a deal than ever.”

The meeting included 23 family members of hostages, 12 of whom are relatives of hostages who are dual Israeli-American citizens, as well as freed hostage Noa Argamani and her father Yaakov, and two soldiers who fought in Gaza.

At a press conference earlier in the day, family members of American-Israeli hostages urged Netanyahu not to give a speech to Congress later this week that does not include an announcement that a hostage deal has been reached.

“We view any speech that is not the announcement of the signing and closing of a hostage deal to be a total failure,” said Jon Polin in a press briefing with eight other relatives of American hostages.

Polin’s son Hersh is among the eight American citizens kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, along with 108 other hostages who remain captive in Gaza.

His message was reiterated by the American hostage families in separate meetings they held with Netanyahu and with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan later Monday.

“We fully expect that his speech is going to be the announcement of this hostage deal that we’ve all been waiting for,” Polin declared during the press conference.

There is no indication that Netanyahu will make such an announcement. Asked what led him to make such a prediction, Polin acknowledged that he had not been briefed on the contents of Netanyahu’s speech. He pointed, however, to support for a deal from Israel’s security establishment and public, which according to a recent poll backs securing a hostage release and ceasefire agreement over continuing the war, 67% to 26%.

“After all the calls for a deal in Israel, I’m taking that cue and saying that if he flew to Washington in the midst of all of that, it must be that he’s here to announce a deal,” Polin said.

Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington on Monday, told reporters before departing from Israel that he would use the speech to try and “anchor the bipartisan support that is so important for Israel. I will tell my friends on both sides of the aisle that regardless of who the American people choose as their next president, Israel remains America’s indispensable and strong ally in the Middle East.”

On Friday, Sullivan said he does not expect Netanyahu’s speech to mimic the last one he gave to a joint session of Congress in 2015.

That speech was marred by controversy after it was organized by then-Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, who is the current strategic affairs minister, with then-Republican House speaker John Boehner, behind the back of then-president Barack Obama, so that Netanyahu could lobby against the Iran nuclear deal that was being advanced by the Democratic administration.

The speech drove a wedge between Israel and the Democratic party, with nearly 60 Democrats boycotting the speech. It is still cited today by some left-leaning lawmakers as having caused longstanding harm to the bipartisan nature of the US-Israel relationship.

An even larger number of Democrats are expected to boycott Wednesday’s speech, as Netanyahu comes to Washington leading what is largely considered the most right-wing government in Israel’s history — one that flatly rejects a two-state solution, which the Biden administration is still seeking to advance.

Still, Sullivan said, he expects Netanyahu’s speech to focus on how the US and Israel are cooperating to address regional threats and are working to secure a hostage deal.

Dermer and National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi “gave a broad preview of what the prime minister is intending to say in his speech” when they were in Washington earlier this month, Sullivan said. “They said he’s intending to reinforce a set of themes and arguments that are not at odds or in contradiction to our policy.”

Netanyahu is set to meet US President Joe Biden on Thursday after efforts to schedule an earlier sit-down were foiled by the president’s contraction of COVID-19 last week. The premier is also slated to meet separately with US Vice President Kamala Harris, who became the new presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party after Biden dropped out of the race on Sunday and endorsed her.

Rachel Goldberg-Polin, Jon Polin’s wife, said at the Washington briefing that she did not anticipate a change in the administration’s approach to a hostage deal following Biden’s announcement.

“He is so committed to getting these people home — specifically the American eight, but all of the hostages — that if anything, this allows him to focus more laser concentration on that goal that he is so passionate about,” she said.

Goldberg-Polin said she has also met twice with Harris, who is “absolutely aligned” with Biden.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday that the sides are within the 10-yard line, after Hamas submitted an updated hostage deal proposal earlier this month that walked back a demand for an upfront Israeli commitment to permanently end the war.

Since that updated offer was submitted, though, Netanyahu has made new demands regarding continued Israeli presence in the Philadelphi Corridor in southern Gaza to block the smuggling of arms from Egypt, and the creation of a mechanism for preventing armed Palestinians from returning to northern Gaza, which have slowed the talks, Arab and Israeli officials involved told The Times of Israel.

Criticizing Netanyahu for the hardened stance, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, father of American-Israeli hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen, told reporters Monday, “We expect from our prime minister to cease all stalling, to cease torpedoing any hope for a negotiated return of hostages and a ceasefire in Gaza to stop the suffering of the people of Gaza.”

Polin said, “Whatever the Israeli government has not yet accomplished, it has to wait and happen at some other date. It cannot happen any longer on the backs of our loved ones.”

Netanyahu’s office announced shortly before his departure for the US that he had directed Israel’s hostage negotiating team to depart on Thursday for another round of talks, indicating that there will not be a deal by the time the prime minister addresses Congress on Wednesday.

The premier’s aides explained that Netanyahu wanted to first secure Biden’s blessing for the more far-reaching demands.

But that announcement was made when Netanyahu’s office expected the meeting with Biden to take place on Monday. Now that it is likely to only take place on Thursday, it is unclear whether the Israeli negotiating team will be held up further.

In their Monday evening meeting with Netanyahu — which included other Israelis heavily impacted by the Gaza war — the American hostage families told the premier he shouldn’t wait until Thursday to dispatch the negotiating team.

“He’s here on sacred ground. It’s not a place for political theater for domestic consumption in Israel,” Dekel-Chen said at the earlier briefing.

Ruby Chen, the father of murdered hostage Itay Chen, pointed out that the Hostages and Missing Families Forum had issued a statement earlier this month urging Netanyahu not to make the trip because “it is premature.”

In their meeting with Sullivan and White House Mideast czar Brett McGurk, the American hostage relatives urged the Biden aides to pressure Netanyahu to agree to a deal. They notably only mentioned the Israeli premier and not Hamas.

The subset of American hostage families in town for Netanyahu’s visit said they would also be meeting him on Wednesday, immediately after his speech. In both the Monday and Wednesday meetings, the American relatives would be part of a larger group of hostage and bereaved families, including some who traveled with the prime minister.

Goldberg-Polin said many of the American hostage relatives were invited to fly with Netanyahu. While she evidently declined to do so, she said she did not judge those who did.

“No one would presume to tell a father what he should try to do to get his daughter out of being held by a terrorist organization in an active war zone for 10 months,” she explained. “We all have this compassion for each other. Even if I have different political views than someone, the pain is so unique and intricate that there’s no room for (judgment).”

The American families briefing reporters were also asking for a separate meeting with Netanyahu for only the American hostage relatives, along with some of their Congressional representatives whom they have been working with to advance an agreement.

“We have been living here in New York for the past 25 years. The prime minister is coming to our country. He’s a guest of the United States. We expect him to talk to our representatives who have been helping us all for the past 10 months,” said Ronen Neutra, the father of hostage Omer Neutra.

Liz Naftali, whose 4-year-old great-niece Abigail Mor Edan was released in the first hostage deal late last year, said that the American hostage families have a unique influence.

“They have a passport that requires a government to do everything they can to release their hostages,” she said, adding that the group has helped bipartisan support for a deal in the US.

The American hostage families will also be meeting later Tuesday with Sullivan, who they said would be briefing them on the status of the negotiations. They will also be attending a post-Netanyahu speech event hosted by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, in addition to meeting with Democratic House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

They will be attending Netanyahu’s speech as guests of various lawmakers from both sides of the aisle.

While Democrats have been supportive of the hostage deal being brokered by Biden, Republicans have been more muted on the specifics of an agreement. Still, the families said GOP lawmakers have been supportive of it in private.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump at his party’s convention last week warned all holders of American hostages abroad that they will pay a “big price” if the captives are not released by the time he enters office.

Orna Neutra, who addressed the convention together with her husband, said Trump was referring to the Biden-backed deal on the table.

The couple spoke on the phone with Trump some two weeks after their son was taken hostage and the former president agreed that the cause should remain bipartisan.