NETANYAHU FACES HIS MOMENT OF TRUTH AFTER HAMAS ACCEPTS CEASEFIRE DEAL

Netanyahu Faces His Moment of Truth After Hamas Accepts Ceasefire Deal

It may well be that the Israeli prime minister does not want a deal at this time – but it's also feasible that the threat of a ground invasion of Rafah is the final leverage on Hamas. 'If Netanyahu wants a deal,' says one official involved in the talks, 'this is more or less the best one he can get'

May 07th, 01AM May 07th, 01AM

Hamas' announcement that it has accepted the latest proposal for a deal to free the hostages caught the government by surprise. The director of the CIA and the Qatari prime minister spent Monday drafting the compromise, which moves further in the direction of Hamas' demands at the expense of the principles set by Israel.

"The proposal is the same proposal," a foreign official involved in drafting it insisted. "The changes are minor. The ball is now in Netanyahu's court."

For now, the war cabinet has decided not to decide. In a phone conversation Monday night, the ministers agreed to send the Israeli delegation to Cairo to discuss going ahead with the deal but didn't order a halt to the army's preparations to invade the Gazan town of Rafah. An official statement said the proposal was "far from meeting Israel's essential requirements."

Senior Israeli officials and foreign diplomats have evinced great skepticism in recent months about whether Netanyahu actually intends to reach a deal. They have had trouble deciphering what stands behind his statements and actions.

"Our assessment is that Netanyahu is in a battle for political survival, and that's how you have judge his moves," a foreign diplomat serving in Israel said. "The more Netanyahu intensifies the fighting, the greater his chances of surviving as prime minister are. Going for a hostage deal endangers his continued reign, because stopping the fighting due to the deal would increase domestic pressure on him to call elections and further delegitimatize his continuation in the job among both the Israeli public and the international community."

Conversations with several people produced two possible explanations for his decision to significantly advance the assault on Rafah despite the warnings of Qatar and the Biden administration that this could endanger the hostages' lives and make it hard to reach a deal to free them.

According to one scenario, Netanyahu does not want a deal at this time and prefers a ground incursion into Rafah over a diplomatic move which could paralyze any further IDF operation in Gaza. The second option is that Netanyahu has intensified his threats to send troops into Rafah in recent days as political leverage over Hamas, in an effort to force the organization to agree to the deal. People who believe that this is the case see the current operation on the outskirts of Rafah as the most significant test of Israeli declarations since the outbreak of the war – mainly the assertion that only an increase in military pressure on Hamas will lead to the release of the hostages. According to this approach, the evacuation of civilians over the past 24 hours, alongside the closing of Al Jazeera, have proved themselves to be effective Israeli leverages.

A source close to Netanyahu claimed over the past few days that the prime minister has been forced to play a double game. "Netanyahu does not have a government if he announces a ceasefire," the source said, adding that the prime minister is willing to postpone the Rafah ground operation in exchange for the first stage of the deal and the release of dozens of Israeli hostages. "The statement that the operation will go ahead in any case is the card over which the sides are currently playing – in the hope that postponing the operation will lead Hamas to gamble that Israel will be hard pressed to execute it afterwards and to continue with the war after a hiatus of several months."

Throughout all of Monday, the Israeli side tried to pin blame for the collapse of the talks on Hamas. The Prime Minister's Office published a statement stating that "Hamas is torpedoing the agreement." Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told worried families that "Hamas' rejection of every proposal for a return of the hostages forces us to launch the operation in Rafah." During the day, Hamas also leaked a statement to the media, whereby it would not return to the negotiating table in Cairo because of the start of the evacuation of residents from Rafah.

These declarations come against the backdrop of increased claims that Israel, especially Netanyahu, is trying to nix any agreement. An Israeli official told the New York Times that Israel and Hamas were close to signing an agreement for the release of hostages and that, as a result of the Netanyahu's statement on Saturday about a ground incursion in Rafah, Hamas took a more rigid line. On the other hand, an Egyptian official told Reuters that the barrage of rockets fired at Kerem Shalom was responsible for the breakdown in talks.

Netanyahu office was quick to issue a response to criticism of the prime minister. "The claim that Prime Minister Netanyahu, rather than Hamas, is responsible for torpedoing the deal for the release of the hostages is a total lie and a deliberate misleading of the public," it said. "The truth is the exact opposite: It is Hamas that has torpedoed every agreement by not budging an inch from its extreme demands – which no Israeli government could ever accept – the most egregious of which is that Israel withdraws from Gaza and end the war, which would allow Hamas to regain military control of the Strip and prepare for the next October 7 attacks, as it has promised to do."

Netanyahu and Mossad chief David Barnea both made public statements in which they stated that they are committed to the continuation of the process. "[Hamas] kidnapped our brothers and sisters and is still holding around half of them in darkened cellars," the prime minister said at Yad Vashem. "We are determined to get all of them out of this dark hell – those who are still alive and those who have fallen. We are committed to getting them home to their families and to putting an end to their ongoing nightmare. Our hearts a with them."

According to Barnea, who heads the Israeli negotiating team, "it is our duty to return the hostages from the death tunnels in Gaza. The moral basis for getting them home is profound and obligatory to us all. The Mossad, and me as its chief, will leave no stone unturned in order to get them home to us, to their loved ones, to their families, their homes and to the Land of Israel."

Now, for the first time during the talks, the proposal was first approved by Israel and only then relayed to Israel. Sources involved in the talks believe that Israel will find it hard to reject the proposal out of hand, notwithstanding the differences. "If Netanyahu wants a deal, this – more or less – is the best one he can get right now," said one official involved in negotiations.

2024-05-06T22:41:24Z dg43tfdfdgfd