The United States stressed the importance of quickly resolving the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal amid reports of tensions between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden on the issue.
“We’ve been quite clear how urgent the situation is in Gaza and how strongly we feel… that this deal needs to get done,” US National Security Deputy Adviser Jonathan Finer said on Sunday.
“The President has said this publicly he has conveyed this privately to all parties, including the Prime Minister when he was in Washington a couple of weeks ago,” Finer told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.
“We need to bring the hostages home, we need to establish a ceasefire that ultimately leads to an end to the war and that helps us avoid the possibility of a regional conflict about which we've been so concerned,” Finer said.
He alluded to the twin assassinations of Hezbollah commander Fuad Shukr and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh last week. Israel has taken responsibility for the Shukr killing, but not the Haniyeh assassination.
“We were not involved in any of the various military and other activities that took place over the course of the last week. We played no role in them,” he stated.
“But we are going to play a role in trying to de-escalate this situation in exactly the ways I described, starting with deterrence and the defense of Israel should it come under attack again,” he said.
Finer stressed that the fastest way to de-escalate the situation was for both Israel and Hamas to accept the framework proposal that Biden unveiled at the White House on May 31.
He warned that it was important to execute the deal before regional events made it much more difficult to reach an agreement.
“Part of why we think this hostage deal needs to get done so quickly is that in this context, when there is so much going on in the region, and the risk level and the threat level is so high, there are always these external events that can make the negotiations themselves much more difficult,” Finer said.
“That’s why we think parties need to get back to the table and try to get this deal done. While we try to keep a lid on the overall situation and prevent it from spiraling,” he said.
He spoke just one day after an Israeli negotiating team came and went to Cairo without any tangible results. Egypt and Qatar have been the main mediators for the deal, with the help of the United States.
Netanyahu has repeatedly insisted that he has not deviated from the framework of the deal, but has set red lines that fall within its parameters, including the IDF’s retention of the critical buffer zone between Israel and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor, and the importance of ensuring that terrorists do not return to northern Gaza.
He has also spoken of exiling some of the hardcore Palestinian terrorists that would be released from Israeli jails as part of the deal, rather than having them return to Gaza and or the West Bank.
Security officials have warned that he is making achieving a deal impossible and that he has set terms that he knows Hamas would never accept.
Putting it bluntly
Channel 12 reported on Saturday that Biden had also accused Netanyahu of delaying the deal. To Netanyahu's assurances that he was not, he said,
"Stop bulls****ing me.”
Gallant reportedly told Netanyahu, “For all moral and strategic reasons, I think we should see the deal as an opportunity. There will be no deal under the conditions you set, and you know it. There is no security reason to delay the deal. Since we are speaking honestly, I will tell you that your considerations are not in the best interest of the matter.”
Netanyahu on Sunday doubled down on his military strategy as the best way to achieve a deal when he spoke at a state memorial service for the Revisionist Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky.
“Only increasing the military pressure on our vile enemies – the murderers of Hamas – will advance the goals of the war,” he said.
“The goals are first of all to secure our future, and to release all our hostages, and I emphasize: that we will return all of them – without exception … to their homes.
“We will continue to press the pedal. We did not let up from the pressure in all combat areas. We will take an offensive, creative, persistent initiative – until victory comes,” he said.
He spoke hours after IDF reported that its “troops eliminated dozens of tunnel routes in the area of the Philadelphi Corridor, and continue to locate additional ones.”
Of significance it said, was “a three-meter-high tunnel was uncovered in the area at the beginning of last week.”
Netanyahu added that “many achievements in the campaign are also based on the fact that we did not succumb” to pressure to end prematurely end the war.
“We exert counter pressure in places where it is important to exert them. We insisted on our red lines, and we will continue to insist on them – both in front of our enemies and in front of our friends – that standing by our side deserves full recognition. We appreciate praise and welcome. Say ‘yes’ when possible, and say ‘no’ when necessary.”