Opposition Leader Yair Lapid says that top level hostage-ceasefire deal mediators called him to ask if he knows why Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not yet responded to the latest proposal for an agreement.
“Over the past few days I spoke with mediators at the highest level in the negotiations, and they said ‘we don’t understand what happened, Hamas accepted the conditions that Netanyahu set,’” Lapid tells Army Radio.
“They called to ask me if I know why he isn’t getting back to them,” Lapid says, referring to Netanyahu.
According to a Channel 12 news report yesterday, “very senior figures in Egypt” have conveyed to their Israeli counterparts their “disappointment, frustration and anger” that Israel, after eight days, has failed to respond to the latest ceasefire and hostage-release proposal that Hamas claims to have accepted.
“With considerable pressure, we got Hamas to agree to 98% of Netanyahu’s demands, but [Israel] has yet to respond to us with a proper answer, and all we’re hearing is that ‘Netanyahu wants something else,’” the TV report quoted unnamed senior Egyptian officials saying.
“This is strange and unacceptable behavior. There is an opportunity to reach an agreement and secure the release of at least 10 living hostages, and Israel is simply turning its back,” the Egyptian officials reportedly said.
Netanyahu has publicly ruled out any further phased ceasefire and hostage-release deals, and is instead demanding a comprehensive agreement in which all the captives held by Hamas would be freed at once, along with other demands including the demilitarization of Gaza. Another of Netanyahu’s demands is for Gaza to be governed by Arab forces affiliated with neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority.
A Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman yesterday also said Doha had not yet received a response from Israel to the latest ceasefire proposal, which he said met almost all of Israel’s demands. “The ball is now in Israel’s court, and it seems that it does not want to reach an agreement,” the spokesman said.
Yesterday, the security cabinet met briefly but reportedly did not discuss a response to the current proposal.