PM’s envoy tells families temporary deal under discussion to be followed by additional phase of hostage releases

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hostage envoy held a meeting with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum today amid the families’ fury over the government’s effort to try and reach a temporary deal that will only see the release of roughly one-third of the remaining hostages.

Hostage envoy Gal Hirsch told the families that the temporary ceasefire is only one phase of a three-phase deal and that two weeks into the six-week pause, negotiations will begin on the terms of the second phase when the remaining living hostages will be released, Channel 12 reports.

But Netanyahu is seeking to resume fighting after the first phase which has hostage families very concerned about whether there would be a second or third phase when the remaining bodies of slain hostages would be released.

Channel 12 says Hirsch declined to say during the meeting that the government is prepared to permanently end the war — which has long been Hamas’s condition for releasing the remaining hostages.