Is Netanyahu really trying to scuttle a hostage deal?
Israelis are convinced that their prime minister is deliberately delaying negotiations for his political survival
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol Building, July 24. Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry July 26, 2024
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims he is doing everything in his power to bring home the hostages held by Hamas, and he made their fate a prominent aspect of his speech to the U.S. Congress this week. But at home, he stands widely accused to doing everything in his power to scuttle a deal.
His repeated delay tactics in the negotiations — for example, extending maximally his sojourn in the U.S. for a whole week while making Israel’s negotiating team wait until he has returned home to resume talks — are held up as proof of his disregard for the hostages. What’s going on?
People are rightly confused. On May 31, President Joe Biden announced that Israel had offered Hamas a three-stage deal that largely amounted to an acceptance of the terrorist group’s bedrock demand: a full end to the war in exchange for all the hostages, alive and dead.
It was almost incredible that Israel would offer this, since it meant that the difficult-to-convince Netanyahu had finally understood that he cannot concurrently achieve both war aims — the release of the hostages and the removal of Hamas from power in Gaza. Perhaps aiming to explain why Netanyahu would agree to — indeed offer — such a thing, Biden noted that Hamas was so degraded by now that it is “no longer capable” of carrying out another large-scale attack on Israel.
Netanyahu did not deny Biden’s presentation of the proposal, whose third phase would involve a major reconstruction of Gaza.
Figuring out what happened next is not easy, because negotiations of this kind are always shrouded in secrecy and accompanied by leaks that are often disinformation. But what is clear is that Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. applied pressure on Hamas to get it to agree — while Israel continued bombing Gaza. There were details still to be hammered out. Hamas wanted firmer guarantees, rather than the implicit logic of the phases, that the war would be over. There was haggling over the prisoner release. Not unreasonable, given the stakes and complexity of these negotiations.
By now, while no text of an agreement has been made public, the leaks out of the Israeli delegation within weeks of Biden’s announcement suggested a deal was on the table and just needed to be accepted. On several occasions the heads of the security establishment, including IDF Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi and Mossad Director David Barnea, have found ways to make public that they see a political roadblock to a deal that is achievable.
Hamas has claimed Netanyahu is raising instead new demands — and this appears correct. Just as a broken clock is accurate twice a day, so it is possible for terrorists to speak the truth.
One example of a fresh Netanyahu demand regards Gaza’s Philadelphi Corridor: a narrow strip of land that runs along the heavily guarded and fortified southern border with Egypt for about seven miles. Netanyahu, in his last appearance before Israeli journalists (which is rather rare) this month, argued that Israel needs to hold on to the corridor to prevent Hamas from rearming.
Like much of his modus operandi, it sounds plausible at first, but in fact, is wrong. The Rafah Crossing is heavily policed by Egypt on its side in an effort to prevent terrorism from jihadi groups — something with which Israel is quite aligned — and to destroy tunnels that Hamas and Egyptian jihad have used for years to smuggle weapons and other supplies.
Security officials have suggested underground sensors would now suffice to deter smugglers. The fact that Netanyahu is now making the Philadelphi Corridor the hinge on which successfully bringing more than 100 hostages home depends is nonsensical. The chief negotiator, Maj. Gen. (res.) Nitzan Alon, is believed to be on the verge of a very frustrated resignation. Israeli defense analyst Itamar Eichner wrote in Ynet that “the assumption of the heads of the negotiating team is that the insistence on the Philadelphi Corridor is … to blow up the deal.”
Why, then, would Netanyahu, the leader of Israel, be doing everything in his power to organize the demise of a proposal he does not deny having proposed?
It is actually rather simple.
The first issue is that two far-right parties have the ability to bring down his coalition and have said they would do so if the deal is signed. They want to continue the war and indeed want a permanent Israeli occupation of Gaza, including Jewish settlement.
The second is more circular. The Oct. 7 massacre that launched this nightmare happened on Netanyahu’s watch. Even without clear culpability, there would have been calls for the leadership to resign. But in this case, Netanyahu bears clear potential culpability.
For starters, the security establishment had warned Netanyahu that his so-called “judicial reforms” — an effort to eviscerate the judiciary and turn Israel into a Turkey-like, authoritarian, semi-democracy — was creating such radical discord in the country that this projected weakness and invited attack. Ignoring everyone, Netanyahu plowed ahead.
Second, the government and military knowingly left the Gaza border practically unguarded because the IDF was sent to the West Bank to protect extremist settlers (a key Netanyahu constituency) during the Simchat Torah holiday.
For most of the time since Oct. 7, polls have consistently shown that close to three-quarters of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign and call new elections (72% in one poll this month). Without Netanyahu’s devoted Haredi base, the proportion of the Israeli population calling for his head is likely closer to 90%.
Netanyahu’s argument against this, also very consistently, has been that one cannot call elections in the middle of a war. That actually sounds reasonable. But, of course, it creates an interest for him to prolong the war.
Specifically, Netanyahu’s interest is to prolong the current situation until the issues around the war itself become so huge -– say, dealing with Israel’s international isolation due to the Gazan death toll — as to overshadow memories of Oct. 7 and his government’s profound failures.
Anyone who thinks this is too cynical for even Netanyahu simply does not know the man. I first interviewed him in 1988, and it was obvious even then.
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