Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Hamas of reneging on parts of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, as he faced pushback against the US-brokered agreement from his far-right allies.
Israel said it had delayed a cabinet meeting intended to endorse the deal, but Hamas maintained it was committed to the agreement announced by mediators on Wednesday.
Two people familiar with the situation said that no such cabinet meeting was scheduled as of Thursday evening, although one said it could take place on Friday.
Antony Blinken, US secretary of state, added that he was “confident” after talking to negotiators that the ceasefire would come into force as planned on Sunday, the day before Donald Trump enters the Oval Office.
“It’s not exactly surprising that in a process, in a negotiation that has been this challenging and this fraught, you may get a loose end,” Blinken said. “We’re tying up that loose end as we speak.”
Israel had said earlier on Thursday that Hamas was seeking to dictate which Palestinian prisoners should be released in exchange for Israeli hostages.
“Hamas is making new demands that there is no chance Israel will be able to agree to, including regarding the list of prisoners to be released,” said an Israeli official.
Netanyahu’s office added that the country would not set a date for a cabinet meeting to endorse the deal “until the mediators announce that Hamas has approved all the details of the agreement”.
Netanyahu’s government relies on the parliamentary support of two far-right parties bitterly opposed to any deal.
Referring to the Israeli’s prime minister’s complaint that Hamas was backtracking, Kirby told MSNBC: “Our team on the ground is actually working with him and his team to iron all this out and flatten it and get it moving forward.”
President Joe Biden, Trump and the prime minister of Qatar, whose countries have been mediating the talks, announced on Wednesday night that Hamas and Israel had reached agreement on a deal that would halt the 15-month war in Gaza and free the 98 hostages still in captivity.
Trump, the first leader to hail the deal on Wednesday, has put pressure on both Israel and Hamas to agree a deal before his inauguration. He has repeatedly warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if the hostages are not released by January 20.
But Israeli finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist party said on Thursday morning that it could leave the government if the deal led to a permanent end of the war.
Speaking to Kan Radio, Zvi Sukkot, a lawmaker from the party, said it would “in all likelihood” resign from the government if a deal was approved, since its mission was to “change the DNA of Israel”, not just make up numbers in the coalition.
The party said later on Thursday it was “a condition for the party to remain in the government and the coalition” that Israel should resume fighting “immediately upon the conclusion of the first phase of the deal”.
While Smotrich and his far-right ally Itamar Ben-Gvir are not thought to have enough support in the cabinet to torpedo a deal should Netanyahu put it to a vote, if they both pulled their far-right parties out of the government, it would lose its majority in parliament.
This would not automatically spell the end of Netanyahu’s government, as Israel’s political system does not bar minority governments, and opposition parties have said that they are prepared to prop up the government if needed.
But the loss of his two far-right allies would shake Netanyahu’s hold on power and could lead to early elections.
“I don’t think Netanyahu has the power to back off from the deal . . . because he was cornered by Trump,” said Aviv Bushinsky, a political analyst and former adviser to Netanyahu. He added that the Israeli prime minister was trying to “square the circle” between Trump and his ultranationalist coalition partners.
If implemented, this week’s ceasefire agreement would offer hope of a halt — and potentially an end — to a brutal war that has become the deadliest chapter in the decades-long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The war has left Gaza in ruins, consumed Israeli society and pushed the Middle East to the brink of a full-blown war.
The deal involves an initial 42-day truce during which 33 hostages, including children, women, the sick and the elderly, will be released in intervals.
In exchange, Palestinians would be freed from Israeli jails, an influx of aid allowed into Gaza and there would be a partial Israeli withdrawal from the enclave.
By the 16th day of the truce, Israel and Hamas are scheduled to begin negotiating the second phase of the deal, which would involve the release of the remaining living hostages, a full Israeli withdrawal and an end to the war.
“There are two immediate imperatives, first to fully implement the ceasefire deal, and then second, to finalise a plan . . . that provides for Gaza’s transitional governance, its security, its reconstruction, and that can make the halt to the fighting endure,” Blinken said on Thursday.
Trump has argued that the agreement is a consequence of his victory in November’s US presidential election, while Biden characterised it as “one of the toughest negotiations I have ever experienced”.
The deal has also been welcomed by Iran, which has hailed it as a “historic victory” for the Palestinian people and as proof that the anti-Israel resistance movement has survived months of destructive war.
The conflict was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, during which fighters from the Palestinian militant group killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and took 250 hostages in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 46,000 people, according to Palestinian officials, and fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave.
Additional reporting by Neri Zilber in Tel Aviv and Bita Ghaffari in Tehran
Read the full article here