Biden stresses ‘immediate need’ for hostage-truce deal in call with Netanyahu
PM said to meet with far-right coalition members to gauge support for agreement; negotiators reportedly believe next two days critical to determine if deal is achievable
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden discussed the progress that has been made in hostage-ceasefire deal negotiations in Qatar during a phone conversation Sunday, as Washington continued to project cautious optimism about the outcome of the talks.
The call came after Netanyahu dispatched a team of senior negotiators — including Mossad chief David Barnea, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, IDF hostage point man Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, and Netanyahu’s political adviser Ophir Falk — to Doha on Saturday night, in a sign that talks were nearing their climax.
At the same time, the premier was reported to be assessing the mindset of his far-right coalition allies — who have previously threatened to bolt the government over a deal — in order to determine the response that a deal with Hamas would garner, should one be reached, in what appeared to be an indicator of the serious trajectory of the negotiations.
During his call with Netanyahu, Biden “stressed the immediate need” for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, the White House said in a readout of the call.
The two also discussed “the fundamentally changed regional circumstances following the ceasefire deal in Lebanon, the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, and the weakening of Iran’s power in the region,” the US readout noted.
Netanyahu, for his part, thanked Biden for his “lifelong support of Israel and for the extraordinary support from the United States for Israel’s security and national defense,” the US readout added. The summary from Netanyahu’s office noted that the prime minister also thanked US President-elect Donald Trump for his own efforts in advancing the “sacred mission” of releasing the hostages.
The negotiations underway in Qatar are based on an Israeli hostage deal proposal from May of last year, which envisioned a phased release of the hostages, the White House said in a readout of Biden’s call with Netanyahu.
The ceasefire that US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators are trying to advance is indeed still within the three-staged framework, Arab diplomats familiar with the talks have told the Times of Israel, but Jerusalem has been much more open this time around about the second and third phases not coming immediately after the first phase is complete.
Hamas, therefore, is demanding assurances from mediators that there will be some connection between the first phase and the subsequent ones, as it seeks a permanent ceasefire. The issue remains a point of significant contention in the talks, the diplomats have said.
While the exact details of the deal’s outline have yet to be publicly confirmed, a Palestinian prisoner advocacy group asserted on Sunday that the first stage would entail the release of 25 Israeli hostages in exchange for 48 Palestinian security prisoners who were freed in the Shalit deal in 2011 and incarcerated again since, along with 200 prisoners serving life sentences, and another 1,000 detainees including women, children and wounded prisoners.
In a rare interview with Ramallah’s Maan news agency, Prisoners Club director Qadura Fares added that all of the Palestinian prisoners would be allowed to return to their homes in East Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip, and the West Bank, except those serving life sentences, who would most likely be deported to either Qatar, Egypt or Turkey.
The former PA minister noted that the exception would be necessary for the protection of the Palestinian prisoners against Israeli assassination attempts.
The Prisoners Club is a Palestinian organization that advocates on behalf of Palestinians in Israeli jails. While the organization used to be financially supported by the Palestinian Authority, Ramallah has reportedly ceased funding the body for at least five years.
Fares was also quoted by Maan as saying that Israel has been pushing for nine more hostages to be released in the first phase, including wounded IDF soldiers, in exchange for a yet-to-be-negotiated number of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences.
Critical days ahead
While disagreements between the warring parties remain, Israel’s Channel 12 reported on Sunday evening that significant progress has been made, and that both Israel and Hamas have indicated that they are willing to be flexible in ways they were not during previous rounds of negotiations.
Specifically, the report said that Israel was willing to compromise on matters pertaining to the so-called Philadelphi Corridor and the positioning of Israeli troops along it; Netanyahu had previously said that Israel insists on the IDF maintaining control of the corridor, which runs the length of the Gaza-Egypt border, for the foreseeable future.
A senior Hamas source told the Qatari al-Araby al-Jadeed outlet on Saturday that Israel would not fully withdraw from the route until the last day of the agreement’s final phase, but would instead gradually reduce its presence during the earlier two stages of the deal.
Channel 12 also cited senior Israeli officials as saying that the next two days in Doha will be critical in understanding whether an agreement is possible.
“It’s possible to reach a final agreement,” the channel quoted the high-level Israeli delegation as having said. “The conditions for closing [a deal] are optimal.”
The Kan public broadcaster similarly reported on Sunday evening that Israeli negotiators were optimistic about the outcome of the current discussions, and believe that there will be a breakthrough in the coming days.
Citing a source familiar with negotiations, the report added that talks in recent days have been “productive.”
The reports came after Hamas sources claimed on Saturday that a deal had been reached and was awaiting Netanyahu’s final approval.
Giving voice to the cautious optimism with which the US has also regarded the current round of negotiations, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday that the negotiating parties were “very, very close, and yet far because we are not there.”
“It is possible to get it done before January 20, but I can’t be sure,” he added, largely echoing sentiments expressed by Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week.
Trump, who enters the White House on January 20, has warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if a hostage deal has not been settled before he begins his second term, although he has refused to elaborate on what that would entail.
His threat was reiterated on Sunday by incoming national security adviser Mike Waltz, who warned Hamas that the terms for a hostage deal would only get worse if it waits until Trump enters office.
“Let’s allow our hostages to be set free. I want to see them walking across the tarmac, or at a minimum, some type of agreement before inauguration because President Trump is serious,” Waltz told ABC’s “This Week.”
“Any deal will only get worse for Hamas, and there will be all hell to pay in the Middle East if we continue to have this kind of hostage diplomacy,” he added.
Vance: What ‘all hell’ means
Meanwhile, US Vice President-elect JD Vance appeared to reveal the practical implication of Trump’s threat that “all hell will break loose.”
“It means enabling the Israelis to knock out the final couple of battalions of Hamas and their leadership. It means very aggressive sanctions and financial penalties on those who are supporting terrorist organizations in the Middle East. It means actually doing the job of American leadership,” Vance told ‘FOX News Sunday.’
The IDF has said that it has yet to dismantle the final two of Hamas’s 24 battalions in Gaza, but that was because they are believed to be holding many of the remaining 98 hostages in central Gaza. Accordingly, the IDF has avoided operating there en masse, so as not to risk the lives of the hostages, given that a number of them have been accidentally killed in IDF operations or were executed by their Hamas captors when they feared Israeli troops were approaching.
Vance did not elaborate on the financial sanctions that the incoming Trump administration has planned against Hamas, but the Biden administration has already levied a host of sanctions against the terror group and has issued arrest warrants for several of its leaders.
The incoming vice president asserted that Trump’s threat of “all hell to pay” in the Mideast if the hostages are not released is what sparked recent progress in the ongoing hostage talks.
“We’re hopeful there’s going to be a deal that struck toward the very end of Biden’s administration — maybe the last day or two,” Vance says. “But regardless of when that deal is struck, it will be because people are terrified that there are going to be consequences for Hamas.”
Far-right lawmakers kept in the loop
At the same time as the US tries to ramp up pressure on the Gaza terror group, Hebrew media reported that Netanyahu met on Sunday with both far-right coalition party leaders Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to gauge their response to the developments in Doha.
Both Smotrich, who leads the Religious Zionism party, and Otzma Yehudit leader Ben Gvir have been outspoken about their opposition to the terms of previous failed hostage deal outlines and have repeatedly threatened to bolt the coalition should a deal come to fruition.
An unnamed political source told the Walla news outlet that the purpose of Netanyahu’s meeting with Smotrich was to assess whether he would resign from the government if Israel agreed to a deal requiring it to release hundreds of Palestinian terror convicts in exchange for the hostages.
While Netanyahu did also meet with Ben Gvir, the source told Walla that the premier believes there to be a high chance the Otzma Yehudit leader will resign if there’s a deal, and so is hoping to convince Smotrich to, at most, vote against the agreement without quitting the coalition.
According to Kan, however, both Smotrich and Ben Gvir gave their word that they would not cause the government’s dissolution by resigning in the event of a deal.
The report added that Netanyahu warned the pair that by objecting to a deal, they would be starting off on the wrong foot with the Trump administration.
Nevertheless, Settlements and National Projects Minister Orit Strock, of Religious Zionism, came out against a potential deal, calling it a “reward for terrorism and a victory for Hamas.”
She later acknowledged that she was not privy to the details of the slowly emerging agreement.
In an interview with the Haredi radio station Kol Berama on Sunday morning, Strock asserted that the deal, should it transpire, would lead to the hard-won victories of the war against Hamas in Gaza “going down the drain.”
“Many Israeli soldiers will pay with their lives for withdrawing from Gaza,” she said, “and hundreds of murderous terrorists will pour in like a barrel of gasoline and ignite terror in Judea and Samaria and across the entire world.”
In a now-familiar threat issued by the Religious Zionism party whenever hostage-ceasefire talks appear to be getting close to an agreement, Strock warned Netanyahu against crossing any “red lines.”
Despite her insistence that the deal would only cause more harm, Strock revealed hours later that she did not actually know the current terms.
Doubling down on her stance in a column for Israel National News, the far-right minister wrote that while she “very much wants to see the hostages released” she believes that “the price of the deal must be discussed.”
“I don’t yet know the details of the deal that is being formulated, and I would be very happy if it were one that I could support,” she wrote. “If only!”
At the same time, and contrary to the positions expressed by the incoming US administration, Strock suggested that Trump would put a stop to the negotiating process when he enters the White House later this month.
Trump won’t want to be associated with “a victory for the axis of evil over the free world, and won’t support a deal that gives out prizes for murderous terrorism,” she asserted to Kol Berama.
Trump’s special envoy to the region Steve Witkoff told Netanyahu on Saturday, however, that Trump expects a deal to be in place by his inauguration, and was said to stress that both sides must show flexibility to get an agreement across the finish line.
It is believed that 94 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
