Negotiators from Qatar, Egypt and the US pressed for an extension of the cease-fire agreement for Gaza that’s due to end in hours, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that his country ultimately intends to resume warfare to eliminate Hamas and the threat it poses.
“There is no situation in which we do not go back to fighting until the end. This is my policy,” Netanyahu said in a statement Wednesday. “The entire Security Cabinet is behind it. The entire government is behind it. The soldiers are behind it. The people are behind it – this is exactly what we will do.”
Israel is pressing for the release of more hostages and would accept an extension of the current truce, a senior Israeli official said, but the country won’t discuss a new cease-fire deal involving the return of more hostages, including men and soldiers, until all civilian women and children are freed.
After an expected release of hostages later on Wednesday, more than two dozen women and children will still be held, the official said. If those hostages are released, Israel is keen to discuss another deal, the official said.
Others involved in discussing what will follow the expiring pause in fighting also staked out firm positions, at least in public.
“A truce is not enough - what is needed is a cease-fire,” Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan told reporters at the United Nations headquarters in New York.
“What is needed is a credible peace and a peace that lasts and that allows the Palestinians and the Israelis to live side-by-side in two states,” he said alongside his counterparts from Arab nations including Egypt and Qatar.
In other developments, Hamas said it released two female detainees with Russian citizenship and will hand them over to representatives of the Russian Foreign Ministry. And the Israel Defense Forces said it was evaluating a claim from Hamas, which is designated a terrorist organization by the US and European Union, that three hostages — a mother and two young children — were killed by Israeli strikes on Gaza. “The IDF is assessing the accuracy of the information” and said Hamas was “responsible for the security of all hostages” regardless.
Hours after Hamas turned over 12 more hostages — 10 Israelis and two Thai citizens — to the Red Cross on Tuesday, President Joe Biden posted a message that appeared to call for an end to the fighting in Gaza.
“To continue down the path of terror, violence, killing, and war is to give Hamas what they seek,” he said on social media platform X. “We can’t do that.”
But spokesman Kevin Munoz said Biden’s “support for Israel’s right to defend itself against Hamas terrorists is as strong as ever” and that the president was simply restating his long-held position that Israelis and Palestinians ultimately need to live together in peace. The posting was a brief excerpt from a speech Biden delivered last week in which he called for a two-state solution and said Hamas was an impediment to that goal.
Read More: Prospects for a Continuing Israel-Hamas Truce: Big Take Podcast
Before the six-day cease-fire, Israel had mounted an intense bombing and ground invasion campaign of Gaza that reduced much of the territory’s biggest city to rubble and, according to local authorities in the Hamas-run enclave, caused the death of more than 15,000 Palestinians. The onslaught came after Hamas fighters swarmed into southern Israel from Gaza on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 240 hostage.
So far, as part of the original agreement and a two-day extension, Hamas has released more than 60 Israeli hostages, all of them civilian women or children, and has separately freed about 20 citizens of Thailand, the Philippines and Russia. The militant group and other armed factions in Gaza are still holding soldiers and a number of civilian men, women and children, including a 10—month-old infant.
Israel, which has handed over about three Palestinian prisoners for every one of its citizens who’s been released, has received a list of hostages expected to be freed by Hamas on Wednesday, and is in the process of notifying their families, Axios reported on X, citing the prime minister’s office.
Bill Burns, director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and the director of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service attended a meeting in Doha on Monday to discuss the potential terms of an extended deal, two people briefed on the visit said, adding that they had now both left. It isn’t clear how much progress they had made, the people said.
Egyptian and Qatari officials were in contact to potentially extend the truce for two more days, Al-Qahera News reported Wednesday. The Cairo-based broadcaster typically represents the Egyptian government’s views. Agence France-Presse cited an individual close to Hamas as saying the Islamist group was open to a four-day extension.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, and Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens are due to arrive in Israel on Thursday.
The pause in fighting in Gaza has allowed the entry of more humanitarian aid into the stricken Mediterranean strip, where conditions are “catastrophic,” according to the United Nations. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security advisor, said the US had airlifted more than 54,000 pounds of medical supplies and food to Egypt that would be delivered to Gaza in the first of three planned shipments.
Saudi Arabia has approached Tehran, which in addition to Hamas backs Hezbollah in Lebanon and Houthi militants in Yemen, with an offer to boost investment in Iran’s sanctions-stricken economy if it stops its proxies from widening the Israel-Hamas conflict, Arab and Western officials familiar with the matter said.
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog is planning a visit to Dubai later this week to attend the COP28 climate summit and is seeking a series of diplomatic meetings to discuss the war, including a possible engagement with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, people familiar with the situation said.
--With assistance from Michael Gunn, Fiona MacDonald, Ethan Bronner, Sam Dagher, Greg Sullivan and Augusta Saraiva.
Author: Antony Sguazzin, Galit Altstein and Alisa Odenheimer
