Deri panned for reportedly saying hostage talks don’t have life-saving urgency
Shas party leader denies claim he caused delay in departure of negotiation team until after Shabbat, notes delegation still hadn’t left by Sunday
Shas party leader MK Aryeh Deri reportedly told a war cabinet meeting last week that an Israeli delegation should not fly to Doha on the Jewish Sabbath for talks on a potential hostage release and truce deal, according to a Sunday report. The reasoning: It was not a case of pikuah nefesh.
Pikuah nefesh is a principle in Judaism that says the preservation of life takes precedence over nearly everything, including the strictures governing the observance of Shabbat, which prohibit traveling in vehicles, including flying.
According to the the Kan public broadcaster, which cited unnamed sources familiar with the events, Deri said that the delegation should only depart once the security cabinet had met on Sunday.
The report prompted condemnation from opposition lawmakers, while Deri denied it, pointing out that no delegation set off even after Shabbat ended at nightfall on Saturday.
Terrorists abducted 253 people as hostages in Gaza when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, starting the ongoing war. The attackers rampaged through southern areas, killing some 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and committing wholesale atrocities.
Israel responded with a military campaign to topple the Hamas regime in Gaza, destroy the terror group, and free the hostages, over half of whom remain in captivity.
Hostages who were released as part of a weeklong truce in November have described the suffering of captives at the hands of Hamas captors, including mental, physical, and sexual abuse.
Activists, including some from families of hostages, have stressed the abysmal conditions that hostages are in pose a daily threat to their lives, in particular as some are elderly, suffering from chronic conditions, or known to have been injured during the Hamas attack.
Of the 130 hostages seized in the onslaught still being held in Gaza, Israel has reportedly assessed that at least 32 are no longer alive, although it is not known how many died on October 7 and how many while in captivity.

Negotiations mediated by the US, Egypt, and Qatar have seen Israeli officials shuttle between various locations for meetings that so far have not produced another deal but are reportedly inching toward a possible agreement.
As talks continued, Deri, leader of ultra-Orthodox Shas party, told the war cabinet on Friday that Israel’s delegation of negotiators should only depart to Qatar once the security cabinet had met on Sunday, Kan reported.
When asked for comment by the outlet on his reported comments on the Doha delegation’s departure, Deri’s office said that “as a general rule, we will not address any issue from the cabinet meetings.”
The report was not the first in recent days revealing that pikuah nefesh was apparently not deemed a relevant factor by politicians in the case of a potential hostage deal.
War cabinet talks on an agreement were reportedly wrapped up Friday afternoon because the Sabbath was approaching, leading Opposition Leader Yair Lapid to question on social media: “If this isn’t pikuah nefesh, what is?”
MK Avigdor Liberman, leader of the opposition Yisrael Beytenu party, addressed Deri in a Saturday post to social media platform X writing, “What is more pikuah nefesh than returning hostages?”
Liberman, a secularist, went on to quote from the Shulhan Aruch, a 16th century treatise on Jewish law that is a backbone of Orthodox life, citing a passage that declares: “Every moment that is late for the ransom of captives, when it is possible to advance it, is like shedding blood.”

Deri snapped back at Liberman with a post to X saying, “Your cynical attempt to make political hay out of the plight of the abductees’ grieving families is inexcusable. There was never a proposal to send the delegation on Saturday to Qatar, and the proof is that it did not leave last night and is only leaving tomorrow.”
He continued that he had not been at the war cabinet meeting on Friday and did not ask for it to end early.
“There are sensitive matters being discussed in the cabinet, which you have no idea about,” Deri wrote. “Don’t preach to me about the sensitivity and the efforts for the hostages. A little modesty wouldn’t hurt you.”
Channel 12’s political correspondent Amit Segal backed Deri’s claim while explaining that the talk of pikuah nefesh began as “a joke” by a senior security figure that led to a “theoretical discussion” between Deri and war cabinet Minister Benny Gantz that ended with “nothing.”
Segal reported that the wider cabinet had not yet decided on the red lines of Israel’s position in the Doha talks and that was why the delegation stayed behind — not because of Shabbat.
Deri is not an official member of the three-member war cabinet but attends as an observer at the invitation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Netanyahu has denied reports that he sought to push off deciding on the negotiating team’s mandate for the Doha talks, and refused to hold a meeting on Saturday on the matter, thereby apparently delaying the departure of the team led by Mossad chief David Barnea.
Separately, the families of hostages held in Gaza expressed outrage Sunday over a poster — calling for the release of an allegedly violent Israeli settler held in administrative detention — that imitates the style of the campaign calling for the release of those held by terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
The posters calling for the release of far-right activist Ariel Danino were hung on a bridge in Tel Aviv spanning the Ayalon Highway at the Halacha Interchange.
“Bring Danino home now!” read the Hebrew-language posters, in the same distinctive style as the campaign calling for the release of the hostages abducted from Israel during the October 7 attack.
In smaller print along the bottom of the Danino posters was the social media hashtag “#Administrative_dentention_only_for_enemines.”
חלאות, שפלים, תתי אדם זה מה שיש לי לומר על מי שעומד מאחורי הקמפיין הזה שמשווה בין עצורים מנהליים מנוער הגבעות (שחשודים בפעילויות טרור ולכן נעצרו) לבין החטופים והחטופות.
תכלס מזל שאתם עושים פעולות כאלו, זה חושף בפני אנשי ימין נורמליים קצת מהטירלול שעומד מאחוריי האג׳נדות שלכם. pic.twitter.com/sQpZ5Kww3y
— Moshe Radman Abutbul משה רדמן אבוטבול (@RadmanMoshe) March 17, 2024
Tel Aviv has been the scene of weekly demonstrations by families of hostages and their supporters calling on the government to reach an agreement for the release of the hostages still in captivity.
In a statement to Channel 12, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said: “We strongly reject the manipulative use of the families of the hostages. Shame on whoever did this!”
According to Haaretz, Danino’s initial arrest in October was explained by security figures as due to his alleged involvement in violent incidents against West Bank Palestinians. Last month, more information came to light indicating he is still thought to be promoting violence, the unsourced report said.
Last month, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant extended his administrative detention by three months.
The measure is typically used when authorities have intelligence tying a suspect to a crime but do not have enough evidence for charges to stand up in a court of law or are wary of revealing the sources of the intelligence. The vast majority of those held in administrative detention are Palestinian.
There has been an uptick in settler violence against West Bank Palestinians following the devastating October 7 attack.