Biden official says Netanyahu delayed Gaza deal in 2024 by adding conditions

Phil Gordon, who served as former US vice president Kamala Harris’s national security adviser during the Biden administration, on Saturday backed up allegations from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former military secretary Avi Gil and other Israeli officials that Netanyahu delayed a hostage release-ceasefire deal in 2024.

Gil, who served as Netanyahu’s military aide from July 2021 to May 2024, made the claim in a bombshell interview aired on Channel 12 Thursday night, charging that the prime minister passed up clear-cut opportunities to bring more hostages home from Gaza alive because doing so would have risked his political career. The claim was one of several explosive allegations Gil made in the interview, including that Netanyahu was warned repeatedly ahead of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack, and that his staffers tampered with his phone records from that morning.

Further expanding on the accusation that Netanyahu delayed a hostage deal for political considerations, the former US official said in a lengthy post on X that the Israeli premier’s refusal to agree to a deal in mid-2024 led to the deaths of several hostages who would have been released in that agreement.

“Netanyahu supporters seem to be taking advantage of Brett McGurk’s book and interviews to claim vindication for Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza,” Gordon wrote on X, referencing Biden’s national security adviser.

“But while Brett’s front-row account is valuable, that doesn’t mean it is definitive or its perspectives widely shared — including among former members of the Biden administration,” he said.

“Brett tells the story of the Biden phone call after [Israel’s accidental strike on a convoy for World Central Kitchen], but not the story of how Biden called Netanyahu on July 4, 2024, to press him to conclude the hostage deal after Hamas had finally accepted the basic framework, dropping its demand that Israel commit to a permanent ceasefire before any hostages were released,” Gordon continued.

Netanyahu supporters seem to be taking advantage of @Brett_McGurk’s book and interviews to claim vindication for Netanyahu’s conduct of the war in Gaza. But while Brett’s front-row account is valuable, that doesn’t mean it is definitive or its perspectives widely shared—including…

— Phil Gordon (@PhilGordonDC) October 10, 2026

“Netanyahu instead added so many of his own conditions — against the advice of his own security chiefs — that the deal became impossible for another six months, during which nearly 9,000 more Palestinians were killed and more Israeli hostages died, including the six that Hamas executed in August,” he wrote, referring to Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Or Danino and Alex Lubanov.

Gordon added, “The Israeli changes included a demand that Israel retain forces along Gaza’s entire border with Egypt, which the IDF had seized only after the original proposal, and a new enforcement mechanism to screen Gazans who were returning home to the north which would have required Israeli troops to remain in central Gaza. Both of those new conditions were dropped in the deal ultimately concluded in January 2025.”

Forty-six of the 251 hostages who were taken in the October 7 attack were abducted alive and died or were murdered in captivity.

When asked on Thursday whether some of them could have been brought back alive, and whether some of those who survived could have been returned earlier, Netanyahu’s former military aide replied simply, “We could have.”

Gil indicated that Netanyahu caved to pressure from far-right ministers in his coalition who wanted intensified war against Hamas in Gaza and opposed hostage deals and ceasefires. One of those ministers, Itamar Ben Gvir, bragged about quashing hostage deals during the war.

Netanyahu’s Likud party rejected Gil’s allegations, calling the interview “part of the false and politically motivated propaganda campaign against Prime Minister Netanyahu and Likud.”

Netanyahu has regularly blamed security officials for the failures of October 7, and asserted that if he had been woken in the early hours of that day, when security chiefs supposedly discussed concerning signs coming from Gaza, he would have ordered swift action and prevented the massacre.

He has also refused to establish a state commission of inquiry – Israel’s highest investigative authority – into the disaster, arguing that an independent panel appointed by the Supreme Court would be biased against his government, which has sought to curtail the powers of the judiciary. He has argued instead for a panel appointed by lawmakers, with its mandate and scope set by politicians.