Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his confidant Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer worked to prevent the US from reaching a new hostage deal with Hamas that would only see the return of hostages with US citizenship, Yedioth Ahronoth reports, citing a senior US diplomatic and intelligence official.
The report, by veteran correspondent Ronen Bergman, claims that Netanyahu’s office leaked the meeting between US hostage envoy Adam Boehler and senior Hamas officials in Doha in order to create daylight between Washington and Jerusalem, in hopes that would cause Hamas to harden its positions. In turn, says the official, Netanyahu could then blame Hamas for the failure to reach a deal.
The reported effort by Boehler to directly arrange with Hamas an interim deal to release living US-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander and the bodies of others was met with intense anger in Israel.
Any deal that would only see the release of hostages with a specific foreign citizenship would likely be highly controversial in the country, and seen as unfairly prioritizing certain individuals over others.
The US official tells Bergman: “Netanyahu’s inner circle launched a crazy campaign to prevent the possibility that the United States would succeed in freeing Israeli hostages.
He adds: “It became clear to us that Netanyahu and Dermer are simply afraid that it will suddenly become clear to the US who wants a deal and who doesn’t; who is reluctant and who is pushing for the continuation of the war.”
Netanyahu’s office stridently denies the account, calling it “another serious manipulation and outright fake news in the midst of negotiations, serving Hamas’s psychological warfare.”
The official tells Bergman that US President Donald Trump knew about Boehler’s meeting with Hamas.
The IDF’s 8200 signals intelligence unit found out about the meeting, says the official, adding that the Americans were surprised that Israel had found out.
The official adds that Dermer managed to thwart a planned meeting between Hamas and Boehler in January. He also tried stopping hostages’ families from meeting Trump earlier this month.
At the same time, Bergman also cites a relative of a hostage who says that in a meeting with Dermer over a year ago, the minister told families of hostages with US citizenship: “Go to America. Talk to the administration and the establishment there, so that they act. That has a much better chance of making something happen than talking to us.”
The Prime Minister’s Office says in a statement that Netanyahu “has insisted on maximizing the number of hostages alive in the deals, in the face of those who are briefing Bergman and who want to submit to Hamas’s dictates of surrender.
“Absurdly, the more the prime minister succeeds in returning the kidnapped, the greater the political criticism against him,” says the PMO, promising that the government “will continue to do everything in its power, together with the security establishment, to return all of our hostages, both living and dead.”