Cairo
The
decision prompted outrage among representatives of the hostages’ families,
and reportedly angered war cabinet members Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot of the
National Unity party, who met Wednesday evening to discuss their response after
being kept out of several key decisions recently.
Netanyahu’s office said
no progress is possible in the hostage negotiations until Hamas changes its
“delusional” position.
In a statement, the
Hostages and Missing Families Forum — representing family members of most of
the remaining hostages in Gaza — said it was “stunned” by the decision to
“thwart” the ongoing talks, adding that “it appears that some of the members of
the cabinet decided to sacrifice the lives of the hostages without admitting
it.”
This decision will mark
“a death sentence” for the hostages remaining in captivity, it said.
Egypt and Qatar are
trying to advance the talks, and were planning to hold meetings on Thursday
that avoided the main sticking point: the number of Palestinian prisoners
Israel would need to release in a potential deal. Thursday’s talks were
scheduled to focus on humanitarian aspects of an agreement.
The heads of the Mossad
and Shin Bet, as well as Netanyahu’s diplomatic adviser, were in Cairo on Tuesday
for the negotiations. A source in the
Prime Minister’s Office told The Times of Israel that they were there to
listen and nothing more. Those talks ended without a breakthrough.
Kan news also reported that Netanyahu had rejected a new
framework proposal put together by the Mossad, Shin Bet and the IDF for a ceasefire
and hostage release agreement.
“While it was In Cairo,
the Israeli delegation was not given any new Hamas proposal for the release of
our hostages,” said a spokesman from the prime minister’s bureau, adding that
the prime minister “insists that Israel will not submit to the delusional
demands of Hamas.”
Officials involved in the negotiations told the
network they “understand Netanyahu’s political challenge, but this is an
opportunity he can’t miss.”
Netanyahu is under pressure from
his far-right coalition allies to reject what they view as an irresponsible
deal with Hamas to halt the IDF’s ongoing offensive.
The families forum said that “while the negotiating
team made a decision to be just passive listeners, female hostages are being raped
and men are suffering abuse.” The group said that starting Thursday, it will
form a “barricade” outside the Defence Ministry headquarters in
Tel Aviv until the prime minister and the war cabinet agree to meet with the
families.
While Netanyahu has
prevented the Israeli negotiating team from returning to
Cairo, a Hamas delegation has seized the opportunity to
meet with Egyptian and Qatari officials for the talks on Thursday.
Mediators in Egypt are said to be racing to secure a
ceasefire before Israel proceeds with a planned wide-scale ground operation in
Rafah.
Israel has been willing
to accept talks based on the original Paris framework proposed two weeks ago,
which reportedly envisions a three-phase humanitarian pause, with 35 to 40
Israeli hostages — women, men older than 60 and those with serious medical
conditions — released during the first six-week phase. Israeli soldiers and the
bodies of killed hostages would be released in the second and third phases,
respectively.
Details regarding the later
phases, as well as the number and identities of Palestinian security prisoners
who would be released by Israel, were to be discussed in subsequent
negotiations if the sides both agreed to the Paris proposal. Other reports
presented different versions of the framework, which have not been officially
published.
Quoting US and Israeli
officials, the Axios news site reported late Tuesday that the key sticking
point in the negotiations is the release of Palestinian prisoners, with US
President Joe Biden telling Netanyahu on Sunday that while Hamas’s demands went
too far, Israel could demonstrate more flexibility, and will likely have to
free more Palestinians per hostage than a previous deal in November that saw
105 civilians released by Hamas.
The report also said
Netanyahu told Biden that he wants a hostage deal but it must be backed by the
cabinet, which includes far-right coalition partners who oppose a ceasefire.
Similarly, an article published by Deutsche Welle DW complements some of the points raised in the piece posted by The Times of Israel.
"President Biden and his top aides are closer to a breach with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu than at any time since the Gaza War began,
no longer viewing him as a productive partner who can be influenced even in
private, according to several people familiar with their internal discussions.
The mounting frustration with Netanyahu has prompted
some of Biden’s aides to urge him to be more publicly critical of the prime
minister over his country’s military operation in Gaza, according to six people
familiar with the conversations, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to
discuss internal deliberations.
The president, a staunch supporter of Israel who has
known Netanyahu for more than 40 years, has been largely reluctant to take his
private frustrations public so far, according to the people who know him well. But he is slowly
warming to the idea, they said, as Netanyahu continues to infuriate Biden
officials with public humiliations and prompt rejections of basic U.S. demands.
Netanyahu has angered U.S. officials on several
occasions recently. He
publicly denounced a hostage deal while Secretary of State Antony Blinken was
in the region trying to broker an agreement. He announced the Israeli military
would be moving into the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a move U.S. officials have publicly opposed, because
Rafah is packed with about 1.4 million Palestinians living in squalid
conditions who fled there under Israeli orders.
Netanyahu also said Israel would not stop fighting
in Gaza until it achieves ‘total
victory,’ even
as U.S. officials increasingly believe his stated goal of destroying Hamas is
elusive.
For now, the White House has rejected calls to
withhold military aid to Israel or impose conditions on it, saying that would
only embolden Israel’s enemies. But some of Biden’s aides argue that criticising
Netanyahu would allow him to distance himself from an unpopular leader and his
scorched-earth policies while reiterating his long-standing support for Israel
itself.
Biden’s private frustration with Netanyahu — which
has been building for months — was evident last week when he said Israel’s military campaign
in Gaza has been ‘over
the top,’ his
sharpest rebuke yet.
The president also spoke in far more detail about
Palestinian suffering, as well as the time and energy he has expended trying to
get the Israelis and Egyptians to allow more aid into the Gaza enclave. “A lot of innocent
people are starving,” Biden said. “A lot of innocent people are in trouble and
they’re dying. And it’s got to stop.”
Referring to Israel’s
plan to launch a military campaign in Rafah the president said the city has swollen to more than four times its
original size. “They’re already living in tents and not getting enough food and
water and you’re saying go somewhere else, Where? How are they supposed to get there?”
This article published by Deutsche Welle is based on
interviews with 19 senior US
administration officials and external
advisers, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Deutsche
Welle is funded from federal grants taken from the federal tax revenue.
Since
the reorganisation of broadcasting as a result of German reunification, Deutsche
Welle has been the only remaining broadcasting corporation under federal
law.
“White
House aides say publicly that there has been no change in Biden’s strategy or
message.
But many of his allies contend that even a sharp
rhetorical shift will have little effect unless the United States starts
imposing conditions on its support for Israel.
“So long as you are supporting Netanyahu’s military
operation in Gaza unconditionally, it
makes absolutely no difference how much you pressure Netanyahu in your comments,” said Ben Rhodes,
former president Barack Obama’s deputy national security adviser.
“Fundamentally, you have to make a decision not to give Bibi carte blanche support.”
The White House has taken modest steps recently indicating its
growing frustration. Biden issued a national security memorandum aimed at
ensuring that countries receiving U.S. weaponry abide by certain guidelines,
including not obstructing humanitarian assistance.
Last week, National Security Council spokesman
John Kirby said an Israeli operation in Rafah “would be a disaster for those
people, and we would not support it” — the most forceful the White House has
been in opposing an Israeli military operation.
Some of the president’s aides have argued Biden can
still support Israel while denouncing Netanyahu. But Biden, who aides say has a
visceral attachment to the Jewish state, has tended to view the prime minister
and the state of Israel as one and the same, according to several people
familiar with his thinking, and has struggled with the idea of criticising a
sitting prime minister, particularly during a time of war.
“I don’t think anybody can look at what the Israelis
have done in Gaza and not say it’s over the top,” the official said. “This gets
to the frustration with the Israelis. Have they done the work on what comes
next in Gaza? No. They haven’t grappled with the really hard questions.”
Biden cares deeply about getting more humanitarian
aid into Gaza, the official said, adding that it is “constantly on his mind”
and he is frustrated by the obstacles Israel is putting up. “Everything is a
daily struggle,” the official said.
Adding to U.S. officials’ frustration is their deep scepticism
about Israel’s ability to achieve its stated goal of total military victory.
In a closed-door briefing last week, U.S.
intelligence officials told lawmakers that while Israel had degraded Hamas’s
military capabilities, it is not close to exterminating the group more than 100
days into its campaign, said officials familiar with the briefing, which was
first reported by
the New York Times.
U.S. leaders are sceptical of Netanyahu’s claim that
he has destroyed two-thirds of Hamas’s fighting regiments, and they warn that
the high levels of civilian casualties are ensuring that a radicalised
population will live adjacent to Israel for decades to come.
In the immediate future, U.S. officials are almost
entirely focused on securing a deal that would see the release of many of the
remaining 130 Israeli hostages in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners
and a long-term pause in the fighting.
White House officials said a temporary cease-fire
would allow them to increase desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza.
They also hope it would provide space to begin grappling with the most
difficult questions ahead, including who will govern Gaza, how to pave the way
for a Palestinian state and how to reform the Palestinian Authority, which
governs parts of the West Bank.
White House officials have increasingly concluded
that Netanyahu is focused on his own political survival to the exclusion of any
other goal, and is eager to position himself as standing up to Biden’s push for
a two-state solution. During a news conference last month, Netanyahu publicly
rebuked Biden over his support for a Palestinian state, saying an Israeli prime
minister needs to be “capable of saying no to our friends.”
“Netanyahu is playing to his political base, and if he
thinks it helps him to trash Biden publicly, he’ll do it,” said Frank
Lowenstein, a former State Department official who helped lead
Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in 2014.
One of the biggest reasons Biden has not been
quicker to criticise Netanyahu, aides say, is his decades-long relationship
with the prime minister. Biden often says he tells Netanyahu, “I love you,
Bibi, even if I can’t stand you.”
A margin note- The US president has expressed
nothing but respect in public but behind closed doors he is said to be growing
tired with the Israeli leader's stance over the war in Gaza. Several foreign news outlets have mentioned leaked
sources claiming that in private conversations Joe Biden has called Netanyahu an a**hole'.
Returning to the main text: -
Biden pressed Netanyahu to “put down an offer on
paper and test Hamas,” the official said. The president then spoke to Egyptian
President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, urging
them to pressure Hamas so the two sides could get closer to an agreement.
Against that backdrop, the president and his aides
were livid when Netanyahu publicly rejected the latest hostage proposal from
Hamas last week — just hours after Blinken, who was in Israel for the fifth
time since the war began, said it held promise.
Yesterday Netanyahu stopped
the Israeli negotiators returning to Cairo.
“Surrender to the ludicrous demands of Hamas — which
we’ve just heard — won’t lead to the liberation of the hostages, and it will
only invite another massacre,” Netanyahu said.
However, Israeli
restrictions on aid and inflammatory rhetoric from Netanyahu and his ministers
cause ‘profound concerns’ in the United States.
Blinken told reporters at a news conference in Tel
Aviv last week “Israelis were dehumanised
in the most horrific way on October 7. The hostages have been dehumanised every
day since. But that cannot be a license to dehumanise others.”
What would make Egypt open its border to
Palestinians?
Cathrin Schaer (a freelance journalist based in Berlin) posted for Deutsche
Welle
“As an
Israeli military campaign causes casualties in densely crowded Rafah, near the
Egyptian border, Egypt is under increasing pressure to let displaced
Palestinians in.
For many Egyptians, the timing is just too
suspicious.
Last week, the Israeli military said it
would launch an assault on Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, near
the Egyptian border, where more than 1 million displaced Palestinians are
sheltering. There are concerns that, as more and more people are pushed up
against the border, plans formulated by an Israeli think tank and leaked earlier to the media in the current conflict are
closer to becoming a reality.
The Misgav
Institute for National Security and Zionist Strategy IZS, released a paper saying the conflict was
a "unique and rare opportunity to evacuate the whole Gaza Strip." As far as I am able to discern, IZS is definitely not
‘mainstream’ politically. Correct me if I’m wrong, it caters mainly for right-wing and
Orthodox groups.
The reported plan is something that the Egyptian
government has firmly rejected, fearing that Palestinians who leave will never be allowed back. Rights organisations have
equated any such "forcible transfer" as amounting to a war
crime.
At the same time, a decision will soon be made by
the International Monetary Fund, or IMF, as to whether Egypt gets an extended
loan — somewhere between $6 billion (€5.6 billion) and $12 billion — to prop up
its badly indebted economy and its currency.
"Is this blackmail?" a recent story in
online Lebanese-owned newspaper Al Modon asked speculating that Egypt could have its international debts forgiven by the IMF's
key shareholders in the US and Europe if it were to host displaced
Palestinians.
The timing and other earlier reports — including one
from the Financial Times that said Israeli politicians
had asked European counterparts to pressure Egypt into opening borders — seem
to justify those suspicions. There's even a precedent: In 1991, the United States forgave Egypt around
$10 billion of debt because it agreed to support a US-led coalition fighting
Iraq.
But, in this case, that's not what is happening,
Riccardo Fabiani, director of the North Africa project for the International
Crisis Group NGO, told DW. "Unfortunately, this has been a rumour
circulating for a while," Fabiani said. "It's been on social media
and on the streets, with people saying the West was offering money to Egypt in
return for hosting refugees."
But, Fabiani added, "there's a serious
misunderstanding here. The IMF, the EU and, more generally, the West, are
willing and prepared to give money to Egypt because they're very worried about
the country's destabilisation because of the Gaza conflict."
On top of inflation and excessive national
debt, Egypt has been hard hit by the decrease in tourism to the region and
insecurity on the Red Sea, Fabiani said
"Basically, with 120 million people, Egypt is
too big to fail," said Ashraf Hassan, a policy associate at the
US-based Century International think tank.
For Egypt, such a deal doesn't add up either. I think the regime recognises
there are no economic incentives that can offset the security and political
peril that might come from letting Palestinians in," Hassan said. “That includes potential security risks
from Palestinian militants on the Egyptian side of the border, as well as being
seen to be aiding Israel in permanently displacing Gaza residents.
For now, Egypt's authoritarian government is walking
a fine line between popular sentiment — the public broadly supports the
Palestinian cause — and long-standing security arrangements
with Israel.”
Last week, The Associated Press reported
anonymous sources saying Egypt might drop a landmark Camp David peace treaty it
signed with Israel in the late 1970s if a military campaign went ahead in
Rafah. Egypt's foreign minister, Sameh Shoukry, has since denied
this.
"It's quite clear that suspending or dropping
the peace deal would be a step too far because of the geopolitical and economic
implications," Fabiani said, noting that the peace deal involves not just
security cooperation with Israel but also guarantees US aid. "Right now,
Egypt is also negotiating a very delicate deal with the IMF and the EU for more
money. So, the last thing they need is to rock the boat."
Symbolic options for Egypt to pressure
Israel are more likely, he said. For example, suspending diplomatic relations
or withdrawing the Egyptian ambassador from Israel.
This week's meeting between Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and his Turkish counterpart, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, offers another option.
"The meeting sends a common message,"
Fabiani said. "It's a way for Egypt to show the world, and in particular
Israel, they are not isolated and that the breaching of Egypt's red line at Rafah is not just a problem for
Egypt. It's a problem for everyone."
All of the experts DW spoke with agreed that what
happens next at the Egypt-Gaza border depends mostly on Israel.
"Egyptian diplomats continue to
suspect that Israel's hidden objective is to push Palestinians toward the
Egyptian border," a late January briefing by the International Crisis Group said.
"Palestinians might even try to enter the Sinai of their own accord if
Israel's actions make Gaza uninhabitable.”
This would be a worst-case scenario "because it
won't be a negotiated solution: It will be imposed upon Egypt."
"But, at that stage, there really aren't that
many choices," said Mirette Mabrouk, founding director of the
Washington-based Middle East Institute's Egypt programme. "If
Palestinians do come across the border, Egypt is going to take them in. They
are not going to start shooting at desperate women and children."
In fact, local authorities in North Sinai have been
preparing for this for months, readying emergency accommodation and medical aid
in case it is needed, she told DW. The Wall Street Journal has
previously reported that Egypt could potentially accommodate up to 100,000 people in the
border areas if needed.
"It's not that Egypt can't assimilate them —
the country already hosts millions of refugees from places like Syria
and Sudan. It's that Egypt doesn't want to be party to another Nakba,"
Mabrouk said, referring to the estimated 700,000 Palestinians who
fled or were forced to leave before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, and
were never allowed to return.
Egypt might well be willing to take in several
thousand Palestinians as a kind of compromise, International Crisis Group's Fabiani said: "Because this wouldn't look as bad as just continuing to
keep everybody out and it would also help Egypt save face with its own
population, which has a lot of sympathy for the Palestinians but doesn't want
to see any sort of [Nakba-style] permanent displacement."
The problem with asking anybody to forecast what
happens next at Rafah is this,
Mabrouk concluded: "It all depends on what the Israelis do next — and
nobody is really holding them to account. Everybody else is just reacting.
I’m adding a postscript
regarding additional measures the Egyptians have taken to prevent an influx of
Palestinians from Gaza. “Egypt has sent about 40 tanks and
armoured personnel carriers to northeastern Sinai recently as part of a
series of measures to bolster security on its border with Gaza, two Egyptian
security sources said.
The deployment took place ahead of the expansion of
Israeli military operations near Rafah,
where much of its population has sought safety. The Egyptians fear that Palestinians could attempt to flee the
offensive by trying to
rush the Egyptian border.
Following the outbreak of war on October 7, Egypt
constructed a concrete border wall that reaches six metres below ground and is topped with barbed wire. It has
also raised earth banks and enhanced
surveillance at border posts, the security sources said.”
Beni,
15th of February,
2024.
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