Netanyahu calls suggestion he torpedoed Cairo hostage-truce talks ‘a complete lie’
PM to meet with CIA chief William Burns in Jerusalem as US attempts to revive negotiations; Israeli official insists Jerusalem believed on Saturday that a deal was possible
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday forcefully rejected a claim made by an Israeli official suggesting that the premier was responsible for torpedoing the latest round of talks with Hamas in Cairo on a potential hostage and truce deal.
The suggestion, said a statement from Netanyahu’s office, is “a complete lie and a deliberate deception of the public.”
“Hamas is the one that sabotages any deal by not moving one millimeter from its extreme demands that no Israeli government could accept,” the statement from Netanyahu’s office continued, “first and foremost, that Israel withdraw from Gaza and end the war.”
The unnamed Israeli official had suggested to The New York Times that Netanyahu’s statements on Sunday about pressing ahead with a ground offensive in Rafah led to Hamas hardening its position in the hostage and truce talks.
The official told the newspaper late Sunday that the negotiations were now in “crisis,” and that Hamas was using them to try to ensure that Israeli troops wouldn’t begin a ground offensive in the southern Gaza city.
However, Netanyahu has for months vowed that Israeli troops would carry out an operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which the IDF says is home to the final Hamas strongholds in the Strip. The terror group, meanwhile, has rejected repeated Israeli truce offers during months of negotiations, with US officials repeatedly saying that the ball was in Hamas’s court when it came to accepting a deal. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week called the latest Israeli-backed proposal “extraordinarily generous” and said it should be a “no-brainer” for Hamas to accept it. The specifics of the offer have been widely reported, but not officially published or confirmed.
Foreign Minister Israel Katz said on Monday that Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar has no intention of releasing all the hostages being held in Gaza, even if Israel emptied its prisons of Palestinian prisoners.
“He believes that the world will pressure Israel to stop the war unconditionally,” wrote Katz on X, “and he will be able to continue ruling Gaza — while he holds the hostages as bargaining chips — with the ability to continue a war of attrition against Israel’s home front while planning the next attack.”
The New York Times report suggested that as the talks in Cairo broke up on Sunday, Hamas was “seeking further guarantees that Israel would not implement only part of an agreement, and then resume fighting.” The newspaper, however, also cited two US officials who denied that the talks had collapsed, and said the two sides were “still reviewing details of the most recent proposals.”
An Israeli official told The Times of Israel on Monday that Netanyahu and his team believed on Saturday that there could be an agreement over a hostage deal framework in the coming days. It was Hamas’s repeated insistence that Israel agree to end the war that caused the latest efforts to fall apart, the official said.
“Hamas wants to declare victory, that’s its entire aim in the talks,” the official argued. “There is no way Israel will agree to it.”
While the IDF began to issue evacuation calls to residents of some eastern neighborhoods in Rafah early Monday morning ahead of an expected ground operation, the US appeared to be clinging to hope that a deal could still be reached.
With the breakup of the talks in Egypt, CIA chief William Burns departed Cairo on Sunday for Doha to hold talks with Qatar’s prime minister in the Gulf nation, which hosts Hamas’s political echelon.
He then headed to Israel, and was slated to meet Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Monday afternoon, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel.
Intensive efforts by the US, Egypt and Qatar to mediate a deal between Israel and Hamas appeared to collapse over the weekend, and the CIA director has been working to find a way to keep hope alive for a deal.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh also blamed Netanyahu on Sunday for “sabotaging” the ongoing talks. In his statement, Haniyeh said that the terror group was eager to reach a comprehensive ceasefire that would end Israeli “aggression,” guarantee Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza, and achieve a serious hostage swap deal.
The Qatar-based Haniyeh blamed the prime minister for “the continuation of the aggression and the expansion of the circle of conflict, and sabotaging the efforts made through the mediators and various parties.”
Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk echoed the sentiment in comments to The New York Times, saying, “we were very close, but Netanyahu’s narrowmindedness aborted an agreement.”
Speaking to his US counterpart overnight between Sunday and Monday, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that Israel was left with “no choice” but to begin a military operation in Rafah since “at this stage Hamas refuses any proposal” for a truce and hostage release deal.
On Saturday, amid signs that a potential deal could be reached, an anonymous Israeli official — widely reported to be Netanyahu — released two statements insisting that there would not be any hostage agreement that entailed an end to the war.
And on Sunday, Netanyahu doubled down on his rejection of Hamas’s demand for an end to the war in exchange for freeing the hostages it holds, saying that such a move would keep the Palestinian terror organization in power in Gaza and pose a threat to Israel.
Throughout the months of negotiations to secure a deal, media reports have repeatedly suggested potential breakthroughs, but talks have always ultimately broken down in part due to Hamas’s demand for a permanent ceasefire and Israel’s refusal to end the war without moving to eliminate the group’s remaining fighters in Rafah.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
