From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, November 7, 2023
Israel opposes US plan for humanitarian pauses, demands hostages freed first — sources
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Israel opposes the US push for humanitarian pauses in Gaza that aren’t preceded by Hamas agreeing to release the hostages from the Strip, a US and an Israeli official tell The Times of Israel.
While diplomatic efforts to free the hostages are ongoing, the US doesn’t want humanitarian pauses to be conditioned on the captives’ release, the officials say.
The US official clarifies that Washington and its allies are also pursuing options that would see hostages released in exchange for humanitarian pauses but says that those “temporary and localized pauses” should be accepted by Israel, even if there is no immediate progress in the hostage talks.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel appears to confirm this sequential approach, saying during a briefing that “conditions can be created [as a result of the humanitarian pauses] that could potentially lead to additional hostage releases [and] that could potentially lead to an influx in humanitarian aid as well.”
The US official speaking to The Times of Israel recognizes that Hamas would try and use such pauses to regroup but argues that Israel will still be able to take steps to limit this.
Pauses are needed to allow for Gaza terror groups to get a full accounting of the roughly 240 hostages, which is necessary to advance negotiations for a more widescale release, the US official adds.
According to Israeli estimates, Hamas currently holds around 180 hostages, Palestinian Islamic Jihad holds roughly 40 hostages and unaffiliated mob families are believed to hold an additional 20, complicating negotiations significantly, as the Qatari mediators’ contacts are largely with Hamas’s political leaders abroad who have largely been sidelined by the terror group’s military leaders still in Gaza, the Israeli official says.
The Walla news site reports that in their call yesterday, US President Joe Biden tried to convince Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a three-day humanitarian pause, which would begin with the release of 10 to 15 hostages. The three days would then be used by Hamas to compile a full list of all the hostages, which would be passed along to Qatari mediators.
Netanyahu rejected the offer, saying that he didn’t trust that Hamas would be willing to release a large number of hostages and that it would suffice with releasing very small numbers while Israel would have a much harder time relaunching its fighting after three days due to international pressure that would surely mount, Walla reports.
