The Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu were sharply at odds Thursday over prospects of reaching a deal for a Gaza cease-fire and hostage release, with Netanyahu saying it was “exactly inaccurate” that a breakthrough was close.
“There's not a deal in the making,” Netanyahu said in an interview with “Fox and Friends." His public skepticism comes as U.S. officials said they were working on a revised proposal to address remaining disputes between Israeli and Hamas leaders after the weekend discovery of six dead hostages added urgency to the talks.
National security spokesman John Kirby reiterated Thursday that only disagreements on “implementing details” of a cease-fire proposal need to be hammered out.
“I’ve heard what the prime minister said. I’m not going to get into a back and forth with him in a public setting," Kirby told reporters. “We still believe, though this is incredibly difficult ... if there’s compromise, if there’s leadership, we can still get there.”
President Joe Biden's team, a lame-duck administration two months before the election, has projected optimism this summer as it works with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to try to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a truce in the 11-month war in Gaza. The deal would release more of the hostages taken by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel, including Americans, in exchange for Palestinian prisoners — one of the big sticking points.
U.S. officials said in the days before Israeli forces recovered the bodies of six recently slain hostages, including Israeli-American Hersh Goldberg-Polin, that Israeli and Hamas leaders could sign off on a deal as soon as the end of this week.
“I’m optimistic. It’s far from over. Just a couple more issues. I think we’ve got a shot,” Biden told reporters last Friday.
Even before that, Netanyahu was digging in his heels, adding conditions that make sealing any agreement before the U.S. elections difficult. His far-right government publicly prioritized for the first time in July — months into the talks — a demand for Israeli forces to keep their presence in a buffer zone along Gaza’s border with Egypt. Netanyahu says it's needed to prevent Hamas from smuggling arms into the Palestinian territory.
“To ask Israel to make concessions after this murder is to send a message to Hamas: Murder more hostages, you’ll get more concessions,” Netanyahu said Thursday. "That’s the wrong thing to do, and I think the Israel public overwhelming is united against that.”
Hostage families have accused Netanyahu of blocking a deal and potentially sacrificing their loved ones to hold the border strip, called the Philadelphi corridor. Hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets, calling for a deal and saying time is running out to bring home the hostages alive.
Netanyahu has brushed off criticism that his management of the war and cease-fire negotiations has been politically motivated and said he believes only heavy pressure on Hamas will force it into concessions.
The Biden administration has stressed that its ally Israel has supported the negotiations and Hamas has been blocking a deal. This week, however, Biden said “no” when asked if Netanyahu was doing enough in the talks.
“We see time and again that Israel agrees to certain terms,” said Shira Efron, a policy adviser at the U.S.-based Israel Policy Forum, which analyzes Israeli-Palestinian relations. “It doesn't say no, it agrees to certain terms — but then says, ‘Yes, but under those conditions.’”
"These public statements that come out after what seems to be an agreement ... basically derail the agreement," Efron said.
Randa Slim, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based Middle East Institute research center, said she saw the talks as being between the U.S. and Netanyahu, and “in this bilateral negotiation, I see Netanyahu having the upper hand.”
The U.S., Egypt and other Arab nations have raised objections to a lasting Israeli presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Hamas says the Israeli position is in breach of the bridging proposal’s call for Israel to leave densely populated areas of Gaza.
U.S. officials say Israeli officials, including Netanyahu, have been more agreeable to negotiations in private discussions than in their public statements.
A senior U.S. administration official told reporters Wednesday that Israel and Hamas have agreed on 14 of the 18 paragraphs in the bridging proposal, have technical differences about one paragraph and deeper differences about three paragraphs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the negotiations.
Those three paragraphs in question focus on the exchange of hostages captured by Hamas and the number of Palestinian prisoners who would be released during what is supposed to be at least a six-week cease-fire.
The list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in the initial phase of the deal includes some who are serving life sentences in Israeli prisons. The official said the dispute about the ratio of prisoners to hostages to be swapped has been further complicated by the recent deaths of the six hostages.
For each hostage, there’s a certain number of Palestinian prisoners that were to be released. Now, “you just have fewer hostages as part of the deal in phase one,” the official said.
Netanyahu said they are still discussing the number of prisoners to be released for each hostage, the list of prisoners to be freed and whether they will be allowed to return home or have to leave.
The U.S. and others hope a cease-fire would calm tensions that threaten a wider regional conflict, including fighting between Israel and Hezbollah militants in neighboring Lebanon.
Attacks by Hezbollah and other Iran-backed groups have increased since the Oct. 7 attack, in which some 1,200 people were killed. Militants also took about 250 people hostage, with roughly 100 remaining in Gaza, a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel's offensive in response has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants in its count.
When it comes to a deal, “we’re being pragmatic about it, and we do believe that we have made an immense amount of progress in the last few months in terms of getting the structure of the deal in place,” Kirby said.