Biden says Israel ready to advance deal, urges Qatari pressure on Hamas to agree

US President Joe Biden told Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani on Monday that Israel was prepared to advance the hostage deal proposal it made last week and urged Doha to pressure Hamas to accept the offer, the White House said.

Biden “confirmed Israel’s readiness to move forward with the terms that have now been offered to Hamas” and “urged [the emir] to use all appropriate measures to secure Hamas’ acceptance of the deal,” the White House said in a readout of the call the two leaders held.

It was unclear whether Biden was referring to a new readiness from Israel to reach a deal. Hours earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed there were gaps between what Biden declared on Friday was the latest Israeli hostage deal proposal and what Israel’s war cabinet had actually authorized days earlier.

As for Biden’s directive to Qatar, it appeared to be one of the furthest-reaching public entreaties to date that the US has directed at Doha, which hosts many of Hamas’s political leaders. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken privately told Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Thani in April that Doha should expel Hamas’s leaders if they continue rejecting hostage deal proposals, a US official said.

Several weeks later, Qatar quietly ordered Hamas leaders to leave Doha, then allowed them to return when hostage negotiations picked up again in May, two officials told The Times of Israel.

Hamas officials have remained in Qatar since those negotiations fell apart, but a source familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Doha is still prepared to formally and publicly oust Hamas’s leaders if an official request to do so is made by the Biden administration. The US is weighing its desire to squeeze Hamas to agree to a hostage deal against its concern that the terror group could move to another country that is less swayed by Washington’s interests, the source said.

Biden’s phone call to the Qatari emir followed his speech Friday announcing what he described as an Israeli proposal for a phased hostage release and ceasefire deal. Biden’s speech triggered shockwaves in the government, whose far-right parties threatened to bring down the coalition if Netanyahu moved to advance the proposal.

The US president laid out a number of the proposal’s key elements in some detail, urging Hamas to accept it and the Israeli government to “stand behind it.”

The deal would see the remaining living female, elderly and sick hostages abducted during the Hamas-led October 7 onslaught released during a first phase of six weeks. Biden indicated that the second phase of the deal would see a permanent end to the war and that Hamas would not remain in power in Gaza, but did not detail how that would come about.

Also during the first phase, Israel and Hamas would hold negotiations regarding the terms of the permanent ceasefire and the release of the remaining living hostages in the second phase. The third phase would see the release of the bodies of hostages and the commencement of an internationally backed reconstruction plan for Gaza.

In Biden’s call with the Qatari emir, the two leaders “confirmed that the comprehensive ceasefire and hostage release deal now on the table offers a concrete roadmap for ending the crisis in Gaza,” the White House said.

Biden “emphasized that this is the best possible opportunity for an agreement and that Hamas’ ongoing refusal to release hostages would only prolong the conflict and deny relief to the people of Gaza,” the readout continued.

The president reiterated that the US, Egypt and Qatar are committed to “the full implementation of the entire agreement.”

Biden told the emir that “Hamas is now the only obstacle to a complete ceasefire and relief for the people of Gaza,” the readout added, noting that the president thanked the emir for Qatar’s efforts to secure a deal.

Separately Monday, US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan held a phone call with a top aide to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Sullivan “underscored the urgent need for Hamas to accept Israel’s proposal to bring about an immediate ceasefire as part of a hostage deal,” the White House said in a readout of the call with Akif Cagatay Kilic.

While Hamas’s leaders are not formally hosted by Turkey, they spend significant time in the country, which is understood to hold a degree of influence over the terror group. Erdogan has hailed Hamas as “freedom fighters” amid the war in Gaza, as Turkey’s ties with Israel have unraveled completely since the October 7 attack.

Hamas reactions ‘overwhelmingly positive’

Also on Monday, an official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel that Israel asked over the weekend to make several “minor updates” to the hostage deal proposal it submitted last week.

The official didn’t specify what the updates were but insisted that they weren’t significant enough to torpedo the proposal.

The official added that Hamas leaders’ initial reactions to the latest Israeli proposal have been “overwhelmingly positive,” though they have yet to formally respond to the offer or to the latest Israeli amendments.

Hamas is slated to send a delegation to Cairo on Tuesday to discuss the latest Israeli hostage deal proposal, two officials familiar with the matter said

One of the officials said the mediators have not been this optimistic about the chances for a deal in months.

Relatedly, the foreign ministers of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt issued a joint statement on Monday expressing their support for Biden’s latest effort to secure a hostage-ceasefire deal.

The Arab foreign ministers held a virtual meeting earlier Monday to discuss the matter, their joint statement said.

And leaders of the Group of Seven (G7) major democracies “fully endorse and will stand behind the comprehensive” Israeli proposal outlined by Biden, a separate joint statement said on Monday.

The G7, of which Italy holds the rotating presidency for 2024, reaffirmed support “for a credible pathway towards peace leading to a two-state solution.”

Later Monday, the US submitted a new resolution to the United Nations Security Council expressing support for the latest Israeli hostage release-ceasefire proposal unveiled by Biden.

“Numerous leaders and governments, including in the region, have endorsed this plan and we call on the Security Council to join them in calling for implementation of this deal without delay and without further conditions,” said US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield in a statement announcing the move. “The Security Council must insist that Hamas accept the deal.”

“Members of the council have consistently called for the steps outlined in this deal: bringing the hostages home, ensuring a complete ceasefire, enabling a surge of humanitarian assistance into Gaza and in the refurbishment of essential services, and setting the stage for a long-term reconstruction plan for Gaza,” the US envoy noted. “Council members should not let this opportunity to pass by. We must speak with one voice in support of this deal.”

The development comes amid an Algerian effort to pass a Security Council resolution aimed at ordering a halt to Israel’s ongoing operations in Rafah, which the US has indicated it will oppose.

Netanyahu, US publicly disagree on whether there are ‘gaps’

Earlier Monday, Israeli officials pushed back on elements of the hostage deal proposal presented by Biden, as Netanyahu insisted that there were gaps between that proposal and Israel’s stance. In response, the US doubled down on its assertion that the proposal laid out by the president was an accurate reflection of an Israeli offer.

“The claim that we agreed to a ceasefire without our conditions being met is incorrect,” the prime minister told lawmakers, according to transcripts from a closed-door Knesset committee meeting leaked to Hebrew media.

An Israeli official told The Times of Israel that Netanyahu said in the meeting that Israel will not end the war in Gaza until it achieves its three war aims: destroying Hamas’s military and civil governance capabilities, securing the release of all hostages, and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel.

“The proposal that Biden presented is incomplete,” the premier told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, according to media reports.

He also reportedly said that there were “gaps” between the Israeli version and Biden’s recounting of it.

“The war will stop in order to bring hostages back, and afterward we will hold discussions. There are other details that the US president did not present to the public,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

The White House subsequently pushed back on the notion of daylight between the Israeli proposal and the one laid out by Biden on Friday.

“We’re confident that [Biden’s speech] accurately reflects that [Israeli] proposal — a proposal that we worked with the Israelis on, so I know of no gaps to speak of,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said during a briefing with reporters.

Later Monday, two clauses of the deal that lie at the heart of Netanyahu’s disagreement with the Biden administration were leaked to the press.

“No later than day 16 [of phase one], the commencement of indirect negotiations between the two sides to agree on the conditions for implementing stage two of this agreement, including those relating to the keys for the exchange of hostages and prisoners (soldiers and remaining men), and this should be concluded and agreed upon before the end of week five of this [first] stage,” reads Clause 8 of the document.

“All procedures in this stage, including the temporary cessation of military operations by both sides, aid and shelter effort, withdrawal of forces, etc. will continue in stage two so long as the negotiations on the conditions for implementing stage two of this agreement are ongoing. The guarantors of this agreement shall make every effort to ensure that these indirect negotiations continue until both sides are able to reach agreement on the conditions for implementing stage 2 of this agreement,” reads Clause 14.

These clauses are meant to be vague enough to enable both sides to interpret them as they wish. On the one hand, the wording can be understood to mean that “if the negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue,” as Biden stated in his address on Friday.

On the other, Israel can say that if the negotiations continue in a way that is not genuine, then the fighting can resume.

To that regard, Biden noted later in his address, “If Hamas fails to fulfill its commitments under the deal, Israel can resume military operations.”

But by saying, and leaking, what he said earlier Monday at the closed-door Knesset committee session about the intention to resume the military campaign at the end of phase one, an unnamed source in the war cabinet told Hebrew media that Netanyahu was inviting Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar to blow up the deal. “If Sinwar goes for the deal, a resumption of the war at the end of phase one will mean us giving up on the hostage male soldiers, the younger men and the bodies of the dead.”

The senior Israeli official told Axios that Netanyahu’s remarks were “killing” the ambiguity by stressing the demands Israel will put on the table during the negotiations on stage two, even before the parties have agreed to enter stage one.

“Instead of keeping things ambiguous, his statements are pushing Hamas to ask for more clarification, making it harder to get a deal,” said a second Israeli official who was also quoted by Channel 12 as saying that Netanyahu’s comments on Monday were aimed at appeasing his far-right governing partners to prevent the collapse of his coalition.