Behind the scenesHostage's dad: Send your loved ones to Gaza in place of ours

At Netanyahu speech, most hostage relatives didn’t stand because they can’t anymore

Increasingly convinced that he’s dragging out the war, relatives say they were largely unimpressed by Netanyahu’s pledge to bring their loved ones home

Jacob Magid

Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief

Carmit Palty Katzir (right) listens to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address a joint session of the US Congress on July 24, 2024. Elad Katzir, Carmit's brother, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza after he was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023; his body was extracted by the IDF and returned to Israel in April. (Screen capture/C-SPAN)
Carmit Palty Katzir (right) listens to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu address a joint session of the US Congress on July 24, 2024. Elad Katzir, Carmit's brother, was murdered by Hamas terrorists in Gaza after he was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023; his body was extracted by the IDF and returned to Israel in April. (Screen capture/C-SPAN)

WASHINGTON — It was a line that brought just about everyone in the US House of Representatives chamber to their feet on Wednesday.

“I will not rest until all their loved ones are home,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared in his speech to a joint session of Congress.

Referring to the Hamas captives held in Gaza, he made the pledge just after highlighting the families of the American hostages in the audience.

While almost everyone stood and applauded, most of the roughly one dozen relatives of the eight US citizens being held in Gaza remained in their gallery seats directly across from Netanyahu. They stared stoically and uncomfortably, seeming utterly unconvinced by the premier’s words.

“There is a bit of a disconnect,” said Omer Neutra’s father Ronen as he recalled the moment in an interview with The Times of Israel.

“We feel a deep sense of appreciation for the support that we’ve been receiving from the community. But the prime minister is standing there. He’s the only one holding the keys for reaching an agreement, and the overall feeling is that he’s engaged in stalling tactics, that he’s indecisive, and in this case, that he’s costing the lives of hostages.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers an address to a joint session of the US Congress, in Washington, DC, July 25, 2024. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

Ripening but not yet ripe

Hours before the speech, Netanyahu’s office announced that the departure of Israel’s hostage negotiating team for talks in Qatar was being delayed. Netanyahu wants to try and convince US President Joe Biden to back a new series of demands in the talks, and because the two wouldn’t be sitting down until Thursday, the order to dispatch the negotiating team would have to wait until some time after, a senior Israeli official said.

There had been hope ahead of Netanyahu’s arrival in Washington on Monday that he would use his record-breaking fourth address before the entire US legislative branch to announce Israel’s readiness to immediately finalize a hostage deal, said Ruby Chen, father of hostage hostage Itay Chen.

But the hostage families learned that wouldn’t be the case when they met with Netanyahu hours after he landed.

“The deal is ripening, but it’s not yet ripe,” the prime minister told the families on Monday night, according to two participants in the meeting, arguing that Hamas recently caved on one of its key demands due to Israel’s military pressure and that more needed to be applied in order to secure the most favorable deal possible.

Indeed, Hamas did agree at the beginning of the month to come down from its long-held primary demand for an upfront Israeli commitment to a permanent ceasefire, but it is still seeking a condition that would allow the phase one temporary ceasefire to be extended indefinitely as the sides negotiate the terms of the second phase of hostage releases, the senior Israeli official said.

Israel’s security establishment has told Netanyahu and the political echelon that Israel has accomplished enough on the battlefield for it to move forward with the deal currently on the table, but the premier is still seeking to compel Hamas to accept an agreement that would easily allow the IDF to resume fighting in Gaza after the first six-week phase, the official continued.

Aviva Siegel, a former hostage and wife of hostage Keith Siegel, listens during a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable discussion with families of US hostages held by Hamas, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, July 23, 2024. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski / AFP)

The prime minister has also issued two new demands in recent weeks — that Israeli forces be allowed to remain in the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt to Gaza, and that a mechanism be established to prevent armed terrorists from returning to the northern Strip.

“We are very concerned that all of these extra elements that he keeps adding to the negotiations are making it difficult to reach a deal,” Neutra lamented.

“We’ve been hearing since January that we just need to apply a little more pressure and then Hamas will agree to release the hostages. He said this before [the IDF] went into Khan Younis, and then before [it] went into Rafah,” he said. “We went into Khan Younis and Rafah. We took over Rafah. We now control all of Gaza, and we still don’t have the hostages home.”

Ronen and Orna Neutra hold portraits of their son Omer Neutra, 22, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages, held in Gaza since the October 7 attacks by Hamas terrorists, gather before the start of a four-day march to Jerusalem calling for their release, on February 28, 2024, at the site of the Supernova music festival in southern Israel. (Photo by JACK GUEZ / AFP)

“The Israeli security establishment is saying that it has accomplished all of its goals and that the time has come for a deal, yet he’s not taking the deal. If it’s not political, what’s the reason?” Neutra asked, referencing a common claim from critics that Netanyahu is dragging out the war to satisfy the far-right elements of his coalition who have threatened to collapse the government if he agrees to the deal on the table.

Chen noted that waiting for ideal terms could backfire. “There is a dynamic in negotiations where if you stall, that comes with risks of the deal falling apart.”

Families of captives held in Gaza and supporters rally in Washington, DC on July 23, 2024. (Courtesy: US Hostages Families Forum)

Trading places

The hostage families had a general idea of what Netanyahu was going to tell Congress regarding their plight, thanks to their Monday meeting, but Neutra said he and his wife Orna still felt it was important to attend the address.

“Every family member had to make their own decision. Some decided not to show up, some decided to demonstrate outside,” he said.

Some decided to quietly demonstrate inside the chamber as well. Six hostage relatives donning bright yellow shirts that read “Seal the deal now” were whisked out of the room and arrested after they periodically remained standing after the rest of the audience had taken their seats post-ovation, in an apparent effort to grab Netanyahu’s attention.

For their part, the American hostage relatives didn’t seem to try and draw as much attention.

“It wasn’t easy, as you saw,” Neutra said. “But we wanted to experience it for ourselves in person and then take those feelings with us when we meet with him and Biden [on Thursday],” Neutra added.

The American hostage families will be joining the two leaders at the White House after they meet privately and with their teams.

Asked what he intends to say in that meeting, Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s father Jon Polin responded that he planned to push back on further talk of a “ripening but not yet ripe” deal.

“I don’t want to hear anymore that we’re getting closer. I don’t want to hear any more moving goalposts. I don’t want to hear any more excuses,” he said on Tuesday.

Jon Polin, father of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, at a protest outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s private residence on Azza Street in Jerusalem, January 21, 2024. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

“Two hundred and ninety-one days is more than enough time to make our loved ones pay the price for us to continue to try and get closer and closer and closer to a deal,” Polin argued before presenting an alternative.

“If the government of Israel and its prime minister feel like they need more time — bring home our loved ones, give us 120 of your loved ones, put them in the place of our loved ones, and then keep on going.”

On Wednesday night, the number of hostages dropped to 115.

But that wasn’t a cause for celebration: The five captives, all of whom were slain on October 7 and whose bodies were abducted to Gaza, were found and brought home by the IDF in body bags.

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