Ambiguously worded Clause 14 in Israeli proposal at heart of PM’s disagreement with Biden – TV report

FILE — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) speaks at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, June 3, 2024. (Maayan Toaf/GPO)
FILE — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (C) speaks at the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, June 3, 2024. (Maayan Toaf/GPO)

Hours after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that “the proposal that [US President Joe] Biden presented is incomplete,” and that there are “gaps” between the Israeli version and Biden’s recounting of it, Channel 12 reports on what it says is the clause in the Israeli proposal that lies at the heart of Netanyahu’s declared disagreement with the president.

Clause 14 in the Israeli proposal, it says, relates to the transition between the ceasefire in Phase 1 of the proposal to the permanent cessation of fighting in Phase 2.

While Channel 12 gives a partial Hebrew translation of the clause, Axios’s Barak Ravid tweets the English text as follows:

“14. 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 2 so long as the negotiations on the conditions for implementing stage 2 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.”

This clause, the Channel 12 report says, is sufficiently vague as to enable both sides to interpret it 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 1, the ceasefire will still continue as long as negotiations continue,” as Biden stated in his address on Friday.

On the other, the TV report says, Israel can say that if the negotiations continue in a way that is not genuine, and there are manipulations, then the fighting can resume.

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

By saying, and leaking, what he said earlier today at the closed-doors Knesset committee session, about the intention to resume the military campaign at the end of Phase 1, an unnamed source in the war cabinet tells Channel 12, Netanyahu was inviting Hamas’s Gaza chief Sinwar to blow up the deal. And “if Sinwar goes for the deal, a resumption of the war at the end of Phase 1 adds up to giving up on the hostage male soldiers, the younger men and the bodies of the dead.”

In Phase 1 of the deal, Biden stated, hostages in a so-called humanitarian category are to be released — including women soldiers, elderly men and the ill and wounded, as well as the bodies of some dead hostages. In Phase 2, male soldiers and other men are to be freed. The remaining bodies of dead hostages are to be returned in Phase 3.

The source claims Netanyahu spoke as he did in the Knesset committee because of political pressures, and under threat by the two far-right leaders in his coalition to quit and work to bring down his government.

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