From the Liveblog of
Thursday, August 29, 2024
Gallant reportedly telling ministers they must push for a deal or face imminent danger of multi-front war
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is presenting the security cabinet this evening with a document he drew up in recent days urging a hostage-ceasefire deal and detailing the potentially dire consequences for Israel of a failure to finalize such a deal, Channel 12 reports.
The report, citing an unnamed political source, says Gallant has shown the document to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and very few other senior officials and that he says it represents the view of the “defense establishment.”
The document reportedly presents Israel as standing at a “strategic crossroads.”
If Israel accepts and is able to finalize a ceasefire-hostage deal, this would not only achieve the return of the hostages, Gallant’s document reportedly states, but also enable a diplomatic arrangement to calm hostilities with Hezbollah across the northern border and prevent regional war. It could also impact Iran’s declared intention to avenge the killing of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran last month.
In not going for a deal, by contrast, Gallant’s document reportedly warns, Israel would be leaving the hostages in captivity and would face the danger of an “imminent deterioration into multi-front war.”
Channel 12 notes that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, intent on fomenting a multi-front war against Israel, might therefore be expected to reject a deal for the very reasons that Gallant is pressing Netanyahu and Israel to accept it.
The report adds that a working-level Israeli delegation remains in Qatar and is making progress on various issues in the potential deal. But the talks are not focusing on Netanyahu’s demands — rejected by Hamas — for an ongoing Israeli presence at the Philadelphi corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border, to prevent Hamas from rearming across the border, and for a mechanism to prevent armed Hamas gunmen from returning to northern Gaza across the Netzarim Corridor. Israel’s security chiefs are widely reported to have assured Netanyahu that Israel can afford to withdraw troops from both those corridors in the context of a deal, while Netanyahu has reportedly adamantly rejected this assessment.
The TV report says the Americans are pushing the sides to wrap up everything, except for those two intractable issues, by next week. Then they will go to Israel and Hamas, present them with the deal as it stands, and push them to resolve the Philadelphi and Netzarim issues. If the sides fail to do so, the report says, the Americans will present their own compromise on the two disputed issues and demand the sides accept it. If one or other does not, the Americans will publicly assign blame.
