From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, November 19, 2024
PM denies report he rejected request to expand mandate of hostage deal negotiators
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The Prime Minister’s Office issues a denial of a report in Ynet which claims that Benjamin Netanyahu refused to expand the mandate of the negotiating team seeking to reach a hostage-truce deal with Hamas.
“Yet another false and biased leak from a sensitive security meeting, designed to subject Israel to Hamas’s dictates of surrender,” the PMO says in a statement. “This is not how you hold negotiations — and this is not how to free the hostages.”
The Ynet report says Netanyahu and Defense Minister Israel Katz rejected the suggestion by the negotiating team — including Mossad chief David Barnea — to expand Israel’s parameters toward reaching a hostage release deal, despite their warning that without such an expansion, no agreement can be reached.
The Times of Israel Community.