Demonstrators protest for the release of the hostages and against the government, outside the IDF’s Kirya military headquarters in Tel Aviv, February 15, 2025. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
Source accuses government of placing political goals over hostages’ lives; talks for second stage said to be dependent on security cabinet approval, as demanded by Smotrich
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to prevent the implementation of the hostage deal’s second phase, a senior Israeli security official familiar with the negotiations told the Ynet news site on Sunday.
“Every time you think it’s impossible to stoop any lower… it turns out that it is possible, and that there is still much lower still these people are willing to stoop to achieve political goals at the expense of hostages’ lives,” the anonymous official told the news site, fuming over a statement issued by Netanyahu’s spokesperson last week in which the latter insisted that Israel is not currently holding negotiations regarding the second phase of the hostage deal.
The senior Israeli security official maintained that this amounts to a violation of the hostage deal, which stipulates that the parties begin holding negotiations regarding phase two of the deal no later than the 16th day of the first phase, which was on February 3 — nearly two weeks ago.
The three-stage ceasefire agreement, reached last month, halted some 15 months of fighting triggered by the group’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, when Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.
Implementation of the entire plan requires Hamas to release all its hostages, Israel to release thousands of Palestinian security prisoners — including hundreds serving life sentences — and a halt to fighting in the Strip, followed by negotiations for a “sustainable calm” and IDF withdrawal from the enclave.
Only 33 hostages are scheduled to be released, in batches, over the six weeks of the first stage.
Netanyahu is under pressure from the far-right flank of his coalition to resume the fight against Hamas until the terror group is destroyed. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to take his Religious Zionism party out of the government if it isn’t, which would remove Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority.
The official claimed that even if Israel changed its approach and immediately engaged intensely in negotiations regarding the second phase of the deal, there is not enough time left to finish those talks by the end of the first phase on March 2.
The terms of the agreement do, however, allow for the first phase to continue indefinitely so long as the sides remain at the negotiation table in good faith.
“Netanyahu is careful to immediately deny that such negotiations are even taking place. But he doesn’t blame Hamas because if he does, that would suggest that Israel is interested in holding negotiations regarding phase two in the first place,” the senior Israeli security official asserted.
Netanyahu has promised Smotrich that negotiations on the second phase of the ongoing ceasefire and hostage deal will only begin after the security cabinet green-lights the move, the Kan public broadcaster reported Monday.
The unsourced report claimed that a clause stipulating as much was agreed on several weeks ago, in the same cabinet meeting that approved the ceasefire deal with Hamas.
Smotrich demanded the measure as a condition for staying in the government, the report said.
Accordingly, Israeli negotiators who will visit Cairo Monday for talks reportedly have no mandate to discuss the second phase unless the security cabinet approves this at a meeting scheduled for Monday evening.
The senior security official who spoke to Ynet pointed to five examples that he said demonstrate Netanyahu’s determination not to see the deal’s second phase through.
The first was the flood of leaks from Netanyahu’s office that Israel is seeking to indefinitely extend the first phase of the deal and see the release of several hostages each weekend in exchange for a certain number of Palestinian security prisoners, rather than implement the second phase, which is supposed to bring the war to a permanent close.
The official argued that such a scenario is completely unrealistic and that Netanyahu’s office is falsely raising the public’s expectations that it is an option, even though Hamas will not agree to release additional hostages after the six-week first phase is over unless it receives an end of the war in exchange.
The official then pointed to the negotiating team that Netanyahu dispatched to Doha last week and its inclusion of the premier’s hostage envoy Gal Hirsch, who has not even been part of such negotiations to date.
“The delegation was dispatched only for Israel to tell the US that it did so,” the senior Israeli official said, adding that the team had not been given a mandate to discuss anything substantive. “Everyone understood that it was all [nonsense]. It is impossible to advance the negotiations if one side is not interested.”
The third example was Netanyahu’s demand that Hamas immediately release all of the hostages given the dire state of health of those released earlier this month.
The official then indicated that Hamas was correct in claiming last week that Israel was violating the ceasefire by refusing to allow caravans and rubble-clearing equipment into Gaza and that pressure had to be placed on Jerusalem in order to release them. Gaza suffered widespread destruction during the fighting and Hamas says it needs temporary housing and construction equipment to rehabilitate the Strip.
The official also argued that Netanyahu has been erroneously sitting back and believing that the US will sort out any breakdown in the hostage deal. Referring to US President Donald Trump’s threats against Hamas to release all of the hostages by this past Saturday, even though the deal only required the terror group to release three that day, the senior Israeli official argued that Trump “has caused serious damage to the deal he so strongly supported in creating.”
Netanyahu’s office responded to the Ynet report, charging that it intentionally left out that Israel chose to suspend its participation in the negotiations regarding the second phase of the deal because Hamas had threatened not to release any hostages last Saturday.
“Israel and the US are fully and closely coordinating, including during a conversation that Prime Minister Netanyahu held today with Trump’s Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff during which the prime minister informed him that he would convene the security cabinet tomorrow to discuss phase two,” the statement added.
Citing unnamed Israeli sources, Kan reported Sunday that discussions are ongoing for holding negotiations on phase two in Qatar next week, though it depends on whether Netanyahu will approve the move and give Israel’s team a sufficient mandate.
The report also claimed that Hamas has warned mediators Qatar, Egypt, and the United States that it won’t release the next batch of three hostages this coming Saturday, citing alleged Israeli violations of the deal — namely the delay in letting caravans and rubble-clearing equipment into Gaza from Egypt.
Unlike last week, according to the public broadcaster, the Palestinian terror group is considering saving the announcement that it won’t free the next three hostages closer to the end of the week, leaving less time to resolve the potential crisis.
Seventy of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — civilians, female soldiers, and Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
Credit: Times of Israel (ToI)
Follow us on all social media platforms @dailyquery for more news, information and analyses from around the world.
