White House: In call with Netanyahu, Biden stresses urgency of ceasefire-hostage deal
Harris also joins call; Arab officials say US went too far in backing Israel’s demands on Philadelphi Corridor; security cabinet to meet Thursday night
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with US President Joe Biden by phone on Wednesday as efforts to reach a hostage deal floundered after recent optimism that a breakthrough was in the works.
Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate, also joined the call, according to the White House.
During the call, Biden “stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacle,” the White House said in a readout of the conversation.
The two leaders also “discussed active and ongoing US efforts to support Israel’s defense against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive US military deployments,” the brief US readout added.
Netanyahu’s office would not comment on the conversation.
Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in the region this week pushing an American “bridging proposal” designed to get beyond disagreements between Israel and Hamas over issues like IDF deployment on the Gaza-Egypt border in the event of a deal.
Speaking to the press on Monday, Blinken praised Netanyahu for backing the proposal.
But Blinken’s approach rubbed some the wrong way. Two Arab officials from a mediating country and a third official involved in the talks told The Times of Israel that Blinken went too far to accommodate Netanyahu’s positions on continued IDF presence in the Philadelphi and Netzarim corridors.
An Arab official lamented that there’s no point in holding the planned high-level gathering of negotiators later this week in Cairo unless the US pressures Netanyahu to back off his new demands and amends its bridging proposal accordingly.
A second Arab official expressed bewilderment at Blinken’s repeated public insistence in recent days that Netanyahu backs the US bridging proposal, arguing that this inaccurately frames Hamas as the lone obstructionist party.
The Arab official pointed to comments that the Israeli premier has continued to make about the need for a permanent Israeli military presence in the Philadelphi Corridor to prevent weapons smuggling from Egypt into Gaza.
A third official involved in the talks said the US bridging proposal doesn’t allow for a permanent Israeli presence in the corridor but also doesn’t rule out such deployment entirely.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Netanyahu reportedly told a group of relatives of soldiers who were killed on October 7 and of hostages held in Gaza that “Israel won’t leave the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor under any circumstances.”
Such statements harm efforts to maintain talks with Hamas, the official said.
Hamas has made clear after forgoing its demand for an up-front Israeli ceasefire commitment that it won’t accept continued Israeli presence in Rafah and Netzarim, “so [Netanyahu] is going to have to decide whether he wants to stick to these new demands or whether he wants to bring hostages home alive,” said the official.
In a joint statement with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Wednesday night, Hamas confirmed that it would not accept anything less than an agreement that included “a comprehensive ceasefire, a complete withdrawal [of Israeli troops] from the Gaza Strip, the beginning of reconstruction and the end of the blockade.”
The terror groups said that they held Israel’s leaders “responsible for the collapse of the efforts made by the mediators by insisting on continuing the aggression and denying what was agreed upon in the previous stages, especially the proposal that the movement agreed to on July 2.”
The July 2 proposal, which Netanyahu dismissed, was itself a response to the Israeli proposal made public by Biden in late May.
According to Kan news, Netanyahu agreed in his meeting with Blinken on Monday to withdraw IDF troops from the Philadelphi Corridor in the second stage of a potential hostage deal with Hamas.
However, Netanyahu’s office said in response that the report was “incorrect.”
“Israel will insist on achieving all of its war goals, as defined by the cabinet — including the goal that Gaza will never again present a security threat to Israel. That requires closing the southern border,” it concluded, referring to the border between Egypt and Gaza.
Amid growing pessimism around chances for a deal, the national security cabinet is scheduled to meet on Thursday evening at 7:00 p.m. at the Kirya IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
According to Channel 12 news, Israeli officials are saying that chances for a hostage deal in the near future are “extremely, extremely low.”
Talks are “on the brink of collapsing,” Politico reported, citing two unnamed US officials and one unnamed Israeli official.
While Washington has publicly insisted on expressing optimism, the officials reportedly said efforts to bring Hamas on board with the latest proposal have so far been unsuccessful, with White House officials said to be frustrated by the Palestinian terror group’s hardline rhetoric against it.
The US outlet said this “has US officials increasingly worried that this proposal will falter just as earlier ones did, with Hamas and Israel at odds and no clear path to end fighting or bring hostages home.”
Officials in Egypt, which has a unique role as both a mediator and affected party since it borders Gaza, told The Associated Press that Hamas would not agree to the bridging proposal for a number of reasons — ones in addition to the long-held wariness over whether a deal would truly remove Israel forces from Gaza and end the war.
One Egyptian official, with direct knowledge of the negotiations, said the bridging proposal required the implementation of the deal’s first phase, which has Hamas releasing the most vulnerable civilian hostages captured in its October 7 massacre that sparked the war. Parties during the first phase would negotiate the second and third phases with no “guarantees” to Hamas from Israel or mediators.
“The Americans are offering promises, not guarantees,” the official said. “Hamas won’t accept this, because it virtually means Hamas will release the civilian hostages in return for a six-week pause of fighting with no guarantees for a negotiated permanent ceasefire.”
He also said the proposal doesn’t clearly say Israel will withdraw its forces from the two strategic corridors in Gaza. Israel offered to downsize its forces in the Philadelphi Corridor, with “promises” to withdraw from the area, he said.
“This is not acceptable for us and of course for Hamas,” the Egyptian official said.
Negotiations in recent months have been based on an outline laid out by Biden at the end of May that would include three stages, with the first six-week period seeing a pause in Israeli ground operations and withdrawal of troops in exchange for the release of 33 hostages in the categories of women, children, elderly and wounded, alongside Israel freeing 990 Palestinian prisoners.
As negotiations over the outline have repeatedly stalled, another round of talks was held in Doha last week, with US and Israeli officials warning it may be the last chance to reach a deal.
Times of Israel Staff contributed to this report.
