Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday pledged his full backing to the three-phase hostage deal that US President Joe Biden unveiled on May 31, after appearing to only partially support it during a Channel 14 interview just one day earlier.
“We are committed to the Israeli proposal that President Biden welcomed,” Netanyahu said, publicly taking ownership of the deal for the first time in a public speech to the Knesset during an attack by the opposition on his leadership skill.He stressed that his support of the deal “has not changed.But that stance does not contradict the goal of defeating Hamas in Gaza.“We will not end the war until we eliminate Hamas and until we return the residents of the South and the North safely to their homes,” Netanyahu said.
Just one day earlier, during an interview with Channel 14, he appeared to speak to those on his right-wing base that oppose ending the war, when he made a statement seen as backtracking from the deal.“I am willing to do a partial deal,” Netanyahu stated, adding that “this not a secret that will return a portion of the people” held hostage.He issued that statement after he was asked specifically about Biden’s three-phased deal, which would see the release of some 33 humanitarian hostages alive or dead, in exchange for a six-week lull in the war.Starting on day 16, mediating countries Qatar and Egypt would begin negotiations to bridge the gap between the two sides; chiefly Hamas’s demand for an immediate permanent ceasefire and Israel’s insisted that it must be allowed to oust Hamas from Gaza. That question would be answered before phase two of the deal began, which would see the return of the remaining live hostages.
Back and forth
Hamas has rejected the deal as presented, insisting that Israel must first agree to a permanent ceasefire and a complete IDF withdrawal before any hostages are released.Israel, until Sunday night, had accepted the deal, insisting that it could move forward from phase one to phase two, as long as Hamas no longer maintained military and governance control of Gaza.
The US has hoped to find a diplomatic venue by which to remove Hamas from Gaza between phase one and phase two, ideally through a Saudi normalization deal with Israel.Netanyahu, in his Channel 14 interview, however, seemed to indicate that he was only committed to the first phase of the deal. He insisted that he was determined to free all the hostages, but did not indicate how he would do so outside the confines of a deal.He spoke as the US, Qatar, and Egypt were working to keep the deal afloat and as Defense Minister Yoav Gallant was in Washington to discuss the proposal.The Hostage and Missing Families Forum condemned Netanyahu’s statement, accusing him of withdrawing from the Biden deal.It charged that he had abandoned the 120 hostages and “violated the state’s moral duty towards its citizens.”“The end of the fighting in the Gaza Strip, without the release of the hostages, is an unprecedented national failure and a failure to meet the goals of the war,” the forum said.“The families of the hostages will not allow the government and its leader to withdraw from the basic commitments to the fate of our loved ones. The responsibility and duty to return all the hostages rests with the Prime Minister.“There is no greater [leadership] test than this,” he stated.Netanyahu told Channel 14 that he was determined to free the hostages.“We have war goals, first and foremost to free all the captives, that is an objective I am not giving up on, we have already returned 136 hostages and we have another 120.“I am not giving up on anyone, not the living and not the dead,” he said.In conjunction, he said, Israel is determined to destroy Hamas, not just to eliminate any threat the terror group posed to Gaza, but to send a clear message to Israel’s enemies planning to carry out another October 7 attack, he said.“We have to defeat the arm [Hamas] that carried out this massacre,” he said as he referred to the Hamas-led invasion in which over 1,200 people were killed and another 251 were taken hostage.The IDF has to do this, “not only to eliminate them [Hamas],” he said, “but also to make it clear that this is what will be done to those who massacre Jews. This is what will be done to those who massacre the people of Israel,” he said.“I am determined to achieve this victory” over Hamas, Netanyahu stressed. “A large majority of the people want it and I am sure we will achieve it.”Netanyahu also addressed the issue of the day after Hamas’s defeat.“To have the day after Hamas, first of all, we need to eliminate Hamas,” Netanyahu said. He deflected criticism leveled against him and his government on the apparent absence of a plan, explaining that “We started dealing with [the day after question] on the second day of the war.”The National Security Council under the leadership of the National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi held discussions on the matter, he said.The Gaza Strip must be demilitarized and the IDF must retain military control, he said.A new government led by local Palestinians, perhaps together with the “management of moderate countries in the region,” could be put in place, Netanyahu said. He hinted at another governance plan, noting that an initial program to have local clans govern had failed because Hamas destroyed them.He dismissed the possibility of rebuilding the 21 Israeli settlements that the IDF destroyed when it pulled out of the Gaza Strip in 2005.“I will tell you what I am not prepared to do. I am not prepared to create a Palestinian state there or to hand the territory to the Palestinian Authority,” he said.“I think it is unrealistic to take territory in the Gaza Strip and settle in it. I think that military control is needed in the Strip, and it is not realistic to settle [Israelis] in the Strip,” Netanyahu stated.National Public Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (Otzma Yehudit) immediately shot back that the Jewish settlement of Gaza and the encouragement of voluntary Palestinian migration out of the areas was the only realistic option.”Jewish settlement in the Gaza Strip and encouraging the voluntary migration of the [Palestinian] residents of the Gaza Strip are realistic and they are the ones that will bring about the realization of the concept of absolute victory.“As we settled in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza after 1967, we will be able to do it again in the Gaza Strip after 2024,” he stated.