Israel has accepted a framework deal for winding down the Gaza war now being advanced by US President Joe Biden, an aid to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Sunday, as Jerusalem waited for a Hamas response.
The three-phase proposal, which Hamas has yet to accept and which the war cabinet discussed on Sunday night, would see the return of the remaining 125 hostages.
In an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu, said Biden’s proposal unveiled on Friday, was “a deal we agreed to – it’s not a good deal but we dearly want the hostages released, all of them.
The proposed deal
“There are a lot of details to be worked out,” he said, adding that Israel’s conditions, including “the release of the hostages and the destruction of Hamas as a genocidal terrorist organization,” have not changed.
US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby told ABC that the proposal itself was an Israeli one, which was transmitted to Hamas already on Thursday night.
“We’re waiting for an official response from Hamas. We would note that publicly, Hamas officials came out and welcomed this proposal,” Kirby said.
“So what would we hope would happen is they would agree to start phase one as soon as possible,” Kirby said, explaining that “phase one would allow for some hostages – the elderly, sick, women – to get out over a period of six weeks.
“While that’s all going on, the two sides would sit down and try to negotiate with Phase Two could look like and when that could begin,” Kirby said.
“We have every expectation that if Hamas agrees to the proposal as was transmitted to them and Israeli proposal that Israel would say yes,” Kirby added.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said that the defense establishment was exploring day-after governing plans for Gaza that did not include Hamas.
“We will isolate areas [in Gaza], remove Hamas operatives from these areas, and introduce forces that will enable an alternative government to form – an alternative that threatens Hamas,” he said.
He stressed that Israel would not accept the rule of Hamas in Gaza at any stage in any process aimed at ending the war.
Biden, whose initial lockstep support for Israel’s military campaign in Gaza has given way to open censure of the operation’s high civilian death toll, on Friday aired what he described as a three-phase plan submitted by the Netanyahu government to end the war.
The first phase entails a truce and the return of some hostages, after which the sides would negotiate on an open-ended cessation of hostilities for a second phase, in which remaining live captives would go free, Biden said.
That sequencing appears to imply that Hamas would continue to play a role in incremental arrangements mediated by Egypt and Qatar – a potential clash with Israel’s determination to resume the campaign to eliminate the Iranian-backed extremist Islamist terrorist group.
Biden has hailed several ceasefire proposals over the past several months, each with similar frameworks to the one he outlined on Friday, all of which collapsed.
The primary sticking point has been Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only temporary pauses to fighting until Hamas is destroyed. Hamas, which shows no sign of stepping aside, says that it will free hostages only under a path to a permanent end to the war.
In his speech, Biden said his latest proposal “creates a better ‘day-after’ in Gaza without Hamas in power.” He did not elaborate on how this would be achieved, and acknowledged that “there are a number of details to negotiate to move from phase one to phase two.”
Falk reiterated Netanyahu’s position that “there will not be a permanent ceasefire until all our objectives are met.”
Netanyahu is under pressure to keep his coalition government intact. Two far-right partners, the Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit parties, have threatened to bolt in protest at any deal they deem would spare Hamas.
Minister-without-portfolio Benny Gantz, who heads the National Unity and is a member of the war cabinet, wants the deal considered.
Hamas has provisionally welcomed the Biden initiative, though a senior official from the group, Sami Abu Zuhri, said on Sunday that “Hamas is too big to be bypassed or sidelined by Netanyahu or Biden.”
A day earlier, another Hamas official, Osama Hamdan, told Al Jazeera, “Biden’s speech included positive ideas, but we want this to materialize within the framework of a comprehensive agreement that meets our demands.”
Hamas wants a guaranteed end to the Gaza offensive, withdrawal of all invading forces, free movement for Palestinians, and reconstruction aid.
Israeli officials have rejected that, as an effective return to the situation in place before October 7, when Hamas, committed to Israel’s destruction, ruled Gaza. Its fighters precipitated the war by storming across the border fence into Israel, killing 1,200 people and seizing 252 hostages.
In the ensuing Israeli assault that has laid waste to much of the impoverished and besieged coastal enclave, Hamas has reported that 36,000 Palestinians have been killed, verifying only close to 25,000 deaths so far. Israel has said that 14,000 of the fatalities are Hamas combatants.
Officials from the United States, Israel, and Egypt ended a meeting in Cairo on Sunday, with Egypt sticking to its position that Israel must withdraw from the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing for it to operate again, according to two Egyptian security sources.
Israel seized the crossing on the Gaza side in May during its offensive in Rafah along the enclave’s southern edge, angering Egypt, which said it would stop cooperating with Israel on the crucial artery for aid into the enclave, and evacuations out of it.
The Egyptian security sources said Sunday’s meeting was positive despite there being no agreement on reopening the crossing. Egypt’s delegation at the meeting said it would be open to European monitors at the border to oversee its operation by Palestinian authorities if they agreed to resume work.
Israeli and American officials said they would work quickly to remove the obstacles to the operation of the crossing, the Egyptian sources said.
Tensions have risen between Egypt and Israel over the takeover of the southern border, which Israel said had been completed on Wednesday.
While Egypt facilitated the entrance of aid through the Kerem Shalom crossing last week, the re-opening of Rafah is crucial as humanitarian agencies warn of looming famine in Gaza.