The White House urged “everyone, including Israel,” to do everything possible to reach a deal for the release of the hostages amid reports that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not approve of sending a delegation back to Cairo for further negotiations.
“The direction of travel has to be everyone doing everything they can, including the government of Israel, to try and reach a deal that is good for Israel and that is good for regional security,” US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
“The US is going to keep pushing hard on this privately with the Israeli government and publicly from this podium,” Sullivan said.
He spoke following a week of high tension between Netanyahu and US President Joe Biden, with NBC reporting that the American president had called the Israeli leader an “asshole.”
Some of the pundits have speculated that tensions have been fueled by a disagreement between the two about the hostage deal.
Netanyahu wants to complete a deal to free the remaining 134 hostages held in Gaza since October 7, but he has been clear that he will not do so at any price.
Biden has said that Hamas’s demands for a deal were “over the top.” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller repeated that sentiment while speaking with reporters on Wednesday, noting that some of Hamas’s demands were “obvious non-starters,” such as the one about the Al-Aksa Mosque compound. It is located on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount and is known to Muslims as Haram al-Sharif.
Miller noted that the status of that site “is not going to be resolved in a negotiation.”
But Biden has also pressed Netanyahu to find a way to be more flexible, including during a conversation the two men held on Sunday.
Sullivan said on Wednesday that during that call, Biden had “strongly advocated for moving forward to get this deal done and to capitalize on the progress that we have seen.”
He explained that Biden “will continue to do that. We will continue to stand up for the need for a hostage deal to get those innocent people home and to get a sustained pause that will move a lot of humanitarian assistance in.”
On Tuesday night, an Israeli delegation that included Mossad director David Barnea, Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, and Ophir Falk, Netanyahu’s foreign policy adviser, returned from talks in Cairo with CIA director William Burns. IDF Maj. Gen. Nitzan Alon, who has been a critical player in the talks, did not join them.
Burns had also met with the Qataris and the Egyptians, the two countries that are mediating the talks.
Burn held a meeting in Paris at the end of January, which led to an agreement between the US, Egypt, Qatar, and Israel about the principled framework for an agreement.
According to Kan News, Netanyahu had rejected a new proposal for a deal drawn up by Barnea, Bar, and Alon, giving the delegation that went only a limited sphere of possible action.
After they returned on Tuesday night, Netanyahu decided not to send them back, and according to reports, he did not inform his war cabinet or seek its consent.
Deal details not made public
The details of a potential deal have not formally been made public, but they are widely believed to be a three-phased deal that includes a prolonged pause to the war, just as the IDF is preparing for a military operation in Rafah, which is believed to be Hamas’s last stronghold in Gaza.
IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told the cabinet this week that he opposed a pause in the fighting, warning that it could extend the war by years and that otherwise, it could be over in months, according to Kan.
It’s expected that the deal would also involve a demand that Israel release Palestinian security prisoners held in its jails, including terrorists with “blood on their hands,” Halevi said.
Hamas has insisted on a permanent ceasefire and a full IDF withdrawal from Gaza.
Netanyahu has rejected those demands, explaining that Israel must be allowed to finish its military campaign to destroy Hamas and retain security control over Gaza.
The Prime Minister’s Office said on Wednesday night that Netanyahu has insisted that “Israel will not give in to Hamas’s delusional demands.”
“Israel did not receive in Cairo any new proposal from Hamas on the release of our hostages,” the PMO said, adding that what is needed is a “change in Hamas’s positions [that] will allow the negotiations to advance.”
Netanyahu then released a personal message touting his record in securing the release of 112 out of the 253 hostages seized in the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7; 109 of those captives had been released through agreements with Hamas, but three were freed through IDF military operations.
“As of now, we have freed 112 of our hostages in a combination of strong military pressure and tough negotiations,” he said.
“This is also the key to freeing more of our hostages: strong military pressure and very tough negotiations.
“Indeed, I insist that Hamas drop its delusional demands. When they do so, we will be able to move forward,” Netanyahu stressed.
Hostage and Missing Families Forum spokesperson Haim Rubenstein said, “The families of the hostages were stunned by the decision to thwart the Cairo negotiations.”
“It appears that some members of the cabinet decided to sacrifice the lives of the abductees without admitting it,” Rubinstein said.
Netanyahu separately insisted that he planned to move forward with a military operation in Rafah, but only after he had drawn up a plan to protect the over 1.3 million Palestinians in that area by the Egyptian border. Many of them fled there to escape bombing in the north of the enclave.
“We will fight until complete victory with a powerful action, including in Rafah after we allow the civilian population to leave the combat zone,” Netanyahu wrote on X.
He spoke out amid strong international condemnation of any potential operation in Rafah.
The possibility of an IDF operation in Rafah has become a pressure lever to force the terror group to make a hostage deal with Israel.
In an unusual move, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas called on Hamas to soften its demands, because a hostage deal was likely to prevent an IDF operation in Gaza.
“We call on everyone, especially the Hamas movement, to quickly complete the [hostage] deal so that we can protect our people and remove all obstacles,” Abbas said according to the Palestine News Agency, WAFA.
“We hold everyone responsible for placing any obstacles from any party to disrupt the deal because things are no longer tolerable, and it is time for everyone to bear responsibility,” Abbas said.
Abbas urged Hamas to “spare Palestinian people the scourge of another catastrophe with ominous consequences, no less dangerous than the Nakba of 1948, and to avoid the occupation’s attack on Rafah, which will lead to thousands of victims, suffering, and displacement for our people.”
Sullivan told reporters in Washington that Abbas’s comments were unusual and that more leaders should call Hamas to task.
“Some of the international community’s pressure should be on Hamas, and Abbas coming forward today to do that has been unusual,” Sullivan said.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, who is visiting Israel, spoke of her opposition to a Rafah military operation at a news conference in Jerusalem. She said that “1.3 million people are waiting there in a very small space. They don’t really have anywhere else to go right now ... If the Israeli army were to launch an offensive on Rafah under these conditions, it would be a humanitarian catastrophe.”
French President Emmanuel Macron’s office said in a statement that Macron, in a phone call with Netanyahu, had expressed his firm opposition to a possible Israeli military offensive in Rafah.
“This could only lead to a humanitarian catastrophe of a new magnitude and to forced displacement of populations, which would constitute violations of international human rights and bring additional risk of regional escalation,” it said.
Reuters contributed to this report.