From the Liveblog of
Thursday, July 18, 2024
TV report: Israel’s negotiators draw up fresh clauses to meet PM’s new hostage deal demands, won’t resume talks until he approves them
Israel’s team indirectly negotiating a hostage-ceasefire deal with Hamas has been drawing up new clauses to take account of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s recently added demands for ongoing Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor and Rafah border crossing, and his insistence on preventing armed gunmen from returning to northern Gaza when displaced residents return in the first phase of the deal, Channel 12 reports.
The negotiating team headed by Mossad chief David Barnea will not resume talks in Qatar until the new formulas have been approved by Netanyahu and his ministerial colleagues, the report says.
Israel’s May 27 proposal — published in full by The Times of Israel last week — does not specify the Philadelphi Corridor and the Rafah Crossing as locations where Israeli troops will be allowed to remain, and its wording does not set out a mechanism whereby armed gunmen would be prevented from returning to northern Gaza.
Tonight’s TV report says the negotiators intend to present their new texts for definitive approval by Netanyahu and his senior ministerial colleagues. Once that approval is obtained, they will convey the updated clauses to US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators, and then to Hamas.
The report underlines that these texts mark a departure from the May 27 proposal, which was approved by Netanyahu and his now dismantled war cabinet and publicly detailed by US President Joe Biden on May 31. It is not clear from the TV report if the fresh formulations will be part of an amended proposal, or an appendix to the May 27 proposal.
As things stand, the report says, Barnea, the head of the negotiating team, has not set a date to fly to Doha to resume talks with the mediators, and he is not expected to fly out in the next few days.
The negotiating team believes the new texts “will break the deadlock” in the negotiations, the TV report says, quoting unnamed Israeli sources, but talks on finalizing the details of the deal with Hamas would still take several more weeks.
It says Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar has also been working with Egyptian and American mediators recently on formulas to resolve the same two security issues.
The report quotes Netanyahu saying privately in recent days that a deal is close, but that further military pressure on Hamas is still required: “We are getting close to achieving the goals of the deal, the distance is shrinking,” Channel 12 quotes him saying. “If we hit [Hamas] harder militarily, we’ll be able to bring a deal to fruition. Hamas is starting to crack.”
Netanyahu made similar comments publicly when in Rafah earlier today, and at a press conference on Saturday night.
The TV report paraphrases unnamed sources in the security establishment warning, however, that this is the moment of truth for a deal and that time may not be working in Israel’s favor — both because of the daily danger to the lives of the hostages and because there is no knowing what other developments might derail a deal in the coming weeks if it is not done now.
Channel 12 also quotes unnamed cabinet sources charging that Netanyahu is deliberately putting off a finalized deal, and speculating that this is either to ensure his coalition survives until the start of the Knesset summer recess at the end of July or in order to try to present Hamas as the rejectionist side.
These sources say that the prime minister’s stance puts the deal “at risk.”
