Word – Israel-Hamas War News: Latest Updates
A quarrel between President Biden and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over Israel’s approach to cease-fire talks mirrors growing domestic tensions between Mr. Netanyahu and senior Israeli security officials over his perceived resistance to a swift deal with Hamas.
Mr. Biden has publicly chided Mr. Netanyahu for failing to agree to another truce in Gaza. Senior leaders from Israel’s military and intelligence agencies have also privately grown frustrated with the prime minister for introducing new conditions to the fraught negotiations, according to two Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.
For weeks, the security officials have privately complained that Mr. Netanyahu is holding up talks by, among other things, reintroducing a demand that Israel continue to operate checkpoints along a strategic highway in northern Gaza during any cease-fire. In May, Israel had softened its position on that point, raising hopes of a deal.
Over the weekend, the previously private gripes gained a public airing when a major Israeli news network, Channel 12, broadcast accounts of leaked arguments between Mr. Netanyahu and the chiefs of Israel’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, Mossad and Shin Bet.
Channel 12 reported that the chiefs accused Mr. Netanyahu of blocking the deal, while the prime minister was said to have accused them of being weak negotiators.
Mr. Netanyahu has blamed Hamas’s intransigence for stalling the negotiations, rather than his own, citing his decision to send negotiators to Cairo over the weekend to continue the talks. But he did not deny private disputes with his security chiefs, complaining only that the leaked reports were themselves harmful to the negotiations.
“The fact is that it is Hamas which is preventing the release of our hostages, and which continues to oppose the outline, and not the government of Israel, which has accepted it,” Mr. Netanyahu told ministers at the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday. Hamas has repeatedly denied the claim.
There is less debate within the Israeli establishment about the merits of assassinating Ismail Haniyeh, the Hamas leader and top truce negotiator, who was killed in Iran last week.
Mr. Biden’s frustration with Mr. Netanyahu is in part related to the assassination, which the U.S. president said had “not helped” the prospects of a cease-fire agreement.
But among Israeli security officials, the prevailing assessment is that a deal could still be reached within days if Mr. Netanyahu set aside some of his conditions, according to the two Israeli officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
To many Israelis, Mr. Haniyeh was seen as a liaison to his more powerful colleagues in Gaza rather than a decision maker in his own right, and he did not have the final say over Hamas’s position on a cease-fire.
Mr. Netanyahu and his supporters argue that Israel should not rush into a cease-fire that could allow Hamas to survive the war intact, and that would also require Israel to release hundreds of Hamas prisoners in exchange for the Israeli hostages seized during the Oct. 7 attack.
The prime minister “deserves special appreciation” for his position, Ariel Kahana, a commentator for Israel Hayom, a leading right-wing newspaper, wrote in a column last week. “Hamas still controls Gaza and so, if the war ends, and certainly if it is reinforced by hundreds of released terrorists, it will immediately begin to regroup militarily,” Mr. Kahana said.
But to his critics, Mr. Netanyahu is holding out for personal reasons rather than patriotic ones.
Mr. Netanyahu’s ruling coalition depends on far-right lawmakers who have said they will leave the coalition if he agrees a deal that would allow Hamas to survive. Since Hamas has rejected a temporary truce, Mr. Netanyahu must therefore choose between a deal and the stability of his government.
“If it is left up to Netanyahu, the war will never end,” Sima Kadmon, a critic of the prime minister’s, wrote in a column on Monday.
To ease his predicament, Mr. Netanyahu wants Mr. Biden to provide a written guarantee that he would support an Israeli resumption of fighting if Hamas reneged on its cease-fire commitments, according to the two Israeli officials. The hope is that such a side-agreement would enable Mr. Netanyahu to convince his coalition partners that a cease-fire might be temporary, potentially allowing him to keep his coalition together.
If Mr. Netanyahu’s government collapses, Israel would likely face early elections that Mr. Netanyahu would struggle to win, according to most polling since late last year. And losing office would heighten his political and legal vulnerabilities: He is currently standing trial on corruption on charges that he has denied.
One U.S. official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy, declined to comment on the idea of Mr. Biden providing a written guarantee. But the official said that a draft of the cease-fire deal already contained safeguards that would allow Israel to walk away from the truce if Hamas broke its terms.
Israel’s military leadership lacks Mr. Netanyahu’s political considerations and has privately determined that a hostage deal must be finalized as soon as possible in order to save the hostages’ lives. While the military has rescued some hostages through raids and rescue operations, top generals concluded weeks ago that further military action to free them may run the risk of killing the others.
More than 100 Israelis, both dead and alive, remain in Gaza, and at least 30 would be released within weeks under the likely terms of a cease-fire deal.
Military leaders also want to focus their energy, resources and troops on Israel’s border with Lebanon, instead of on Gaza. The likelihood of an all-out war with Hezbollah, a Lebanese militia, rose sharply last month after a deadly strike from Lebanon killed 12 children and teenagers, leading Israel to assassinate a top Hezbollah commander.
On Monday, Israelis were braced for aggressive retaliation from Hezbollah, which many fear will prompt a broader war, particularly with Iran, Hezbollah’s benefactor, also poised to strike Israel in response to Mr. Haniyeh’s assassination.
Mediators hope that a truce in Gaza would prompt a similar cease-fire in Lebanon. Hezbollah has said it will keep firing as long as the Gaza war continues.
Myra Noveck and Johnatan Reiss contributed reporting from Jerusalem, and Peter Baker from Washington.
