PM tells families no true Hamas proposal for hostage release, says Israel made offer
In meeting with relatives of captives, Netanyahu mentions diplomatic efforts on which ‘I will not elaborate’
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushed back Monday against reports of a proposed truce between Israel and Hamas, while alluding to an Israeli initiative to bring about the release of hostages held by the Palestinian terrorist organization.
At a meeting in his Jerusalem office with relatives of hostages, Netanyahu stated that “contrary to what has been said, there is no real Hamas proposal,” according to a statement released by the Prime Minister’s Office.
“I tell you this as clearly as I can, because there are so many untrue [claims] that must be torturing you,” the statement quoted Netanyahu as saying.
“On the other hand, we have an [Israel] initiative, and I will not elaborate,” Netanyahu added.
Channel 12 later published a recording from the meeting, in which Netanyahu could be heard saying: “There is a proposal of mine, which I also passed in the war cabinet. We conveyed it and now there is, as they say, a tug of war.
“I can’t elaborate here, but our proposal is something we have passed on to the mediators.”
Hostages’ relatives who attended the meeting with the prime minister later reiterated to Channel 12 the urgency of a deal to free their loved ones.
“The hostages don’t have time, and there is no time for politics… we will all support him and stand with him if he makes a deal,” said Yizhar Lifshitz, whose father Oded was abducted by Hamas.
“We emphasized the urgency — we don’t want to learn every day of another hostage who died in captivity. We received no new information about a deal that’s on the table,” added Einav Zangauker, mother of Matan, whom Hamas took captive on October 7.
Following the prime minister’s vague allusion to an Israeli proposal, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who leads the far-right Otzma Yehudit faction, a key member of Netanyahu’s coalition, said at a faction meeting that “if there isn’t a war, there won’t be a government,” according to a Channel 13 report.
Hamas has repeatedly said any deal to release more hostages will only happen if Israel agrees to an end to the war in Gaza. Israel has vowed not to stop until the terror group is removed.
Ben Gvir’s political partner, Finance Minister and leader of the Religious Zionism party Bezalel Smotrich, also made the case to continue fighting. Speaking at a meeting of his faction, Smotrich said that the possibility of releasing hostages by pausing the fighting was “science fiction and total deception.”
The minister made no mention of Netanyahu’s allusion to an Israeli proposal regarding the hostages. Instead, he couched his comments as a criticism of Opposition Leader Yair Lapid and war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, all of whom have advocated a speedy release of the hostages, even at the price of a ceasefire.
Netanyahu’s murky mention of an Israeli diplomatic maneuver comes at the same time as growing international pressure on Israel to end the fighting, as well as an intensifying internal debate whether continued fighting can secure the return of the remaining 136 hostages, at least 28 of whom are known to have been killed.
On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States, Egypt, and Qatar are pushing Israel and Hamas to accept a comprehensive plan that would end the war, free the hostages, and ultimately lead to full normalization for Israel with its neighbors in return for a path to Palestinian statehood.
Netanyahu responded in a video statement, refusing outright to “the end of the war, the exit of our forces from Gaza, releasing all the murderers and rapists of the Nukhba [forces] and leaving Hamas intact.” These, the prime minister said, were the Palestinian terror organization’s demands.
“If we agree to this, our soldiers will have fallen in vain. If we agree to this, we cannot guarantee security for our citizens. We cannot bring the evacuees [from Israel’s south] home safely, and the next October 7 will be just a matter of time. I cannot agree to such a fatal blow to Israeli security, and therefore I cannot agree to that,” said the prime minister.
Family members of those held by Hamas, organizing through the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, have grown increasingly vocal in their opposition to Netanyahu’s strategy, saying the continued fighting is putting their loved ones at risk. On Sunday evening, the families rallied outside the prime minister’s private residence in Jerusalem to demand he reach a deal for the hostages’ release. On Monday, relatives of hostages crashed a session of the Knesset’s Finance Committee, bearing signs that read “You will not sit here while they die there.”
Over 250 people of all ages were abducted by Hamas on October 7, when 3,000 terrorists invaded Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and committing numerous atrocities, including weaponizing sexual violence on a mass scale. In late November, 105 hostages were released during a two-week “humanitarian ceasefire” mediated by the US and Qatar, but talks of a further deal have languished since that ceasefire collapsed.
