Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli security chiefs that he is awaiting a United States' commitment that Israel will be able to resume its war on Hamas in Gaza after the first phase of the hostage deal is completed if there is no progress made on phase 2.
An official who participated in last week's meeting revealed that Washington has already agreed to send a letter of commitment, but only after the cease-fire and hostage-release deal is signed.
The exchange highlighted the immense lack of trust that the entire security echelon of Israel has in its prime minister and his expressed mistrust in them.
4 View gallery
Ronen Bar, Benjamin Netanyahu, Yoav Gallant, Herzi Helavi
(Photo: Yair Sagi, EPA, Elad Malka, IDF )
The security officials believe Netanyahu will demand the disarmament of Hamas and the expulsion of its leaders from Gaza in the second phase of the deal, demands that they said will be rejected, leaving most of the hostages in captivity.
The American letter was discussed in Netanyahu's meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden last month at the White House. It is, in effect, an American guarantee that Israel will not be compelled to hold its fire indefinitely.
4 View gallery
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House
(Photo: Samuel Corum / EPA)
Netanyahu told the officials that he was delaying his agreement to a deal because he wanted to present the letter to the Israeli public, but to his surprise one person in the room said that Washington had already agreed to the substance of such a guarantee and that drafts were being exchanged.
The message was clear: That is not an excuse to delay a deal. The prime minister tried to keep the administration's agreement from the security officials but failed. A letter will be delivered, but only after Netanyahu signs the deal, because the mistrust of Netanyahu exists in Washington as well.
The officials told Netanyahu that they consider the current proposal for a hostage deal an opportunity, while he regards it as a threat. "A hostage deal is not only a humanitarian matter of the first order, but also a deal that could unlock regional stability and move us forward. Netanyahu responded as he typically does by complaining that instead of pressuring Hamas, he is being criticized in the press," one official said.
Senior sources would not confirm that Netanyahu used the term "feeble" when accusing the security officials of failing to take a strong enough stand in the negotiations for a deal. They doubted that he would have the guts to say such things to Shin Bet Chief Ronen Bar's face or to Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi. After all, it was Halevi along with Gallant who had to convince Netanyahu to agree to a ground incursion into Gaza which he feared would result in "thousands of IDF casualties," in the first months of the war, as the prime minister had predicted.
Bar's Shin Bet provided the intelligence that enabled the assassination of senior Hamas terrorists, including Mohammed Deif. There has never been a more successful month of targeted killing than July was. Of the prime minister's claim that only military pressure could force Hamas to release the hostages, there can be no more military pressure than the IDF's operations in the past two months.
Netanyahu's allies would argue, however, that if he had succumbed to pressure to agree to a deal, the targeted killings would not have taken place. To that the officials responded that those killings could have been carried out after the hostages were freed, without risking a regional war and condemning the hostages to death.
4 View gallery
Mohammed Deif confirmed killed in an Israeli strike on Khan Younis
(Photo: Haitham Imad / EPA, IDF)
Most of those involved in the negotiations have concluded that Netanyahu was about to miss a strategic opportunity, no less, because of his personal political considerations. He can now return the hostages who are dying, either at the hands of their Hamas captors or in IDF strikes and he can limit the regional conflict rather than bring about a full-blown war, they said.
Hamas has been hit so hard, that Iran and Hezbollah realize that they would likely not be able to save it, in Gaza at least. Netanyahu can also reach a diplomatic solution in the north that would push Hezbollah away from the border with Israel and deploy an extended international force to South Lebanon so that the Israelis who have been evacuated from their homes for the past 10 months would be able to return and rebuild.
All of that can be achieved at the cost of releasing Palestinian prisoners, and not much more. But for Netanyahu, the images of Palestinians returning to northern Gaza are harder to accept than the release of hostages. The far-right and others in his coalition, have become enamored with the idea that the northern part of the Strip would be empty of Palestinian residents. Although he never bought into that idea, Netanyahu now refuses to shatter it.
The sources said however that the tense meeting with Biden and the even more tense meeting with the heads of Israel's security agencies may have worked. Netanyahu instructed the delegation team to give real positive answers to mediators in Cairo over the weekend. Those provide more room to maneuver and a breakthrough may be near, and mediators are awaiting the Hamas response. "Bibi does not move unless he is pressured," one source who is in the know said.