Netanyahu orders new talks to release all hostages, pushes ahead with Gaza City takeover

Netanyahu orders new talks to release all hostages, pushes ahead with Gaza City takeover

city. Well, Israel’s plans to expand the fighting and seize Gaza City have sparked international outcry as well as domestic opposition. For the very latest, let’s cross live now to Noa Tonapolski. She’s our correspondent based in Jerusalem. Good to have you with us this evening, Noa. Noa, not so long ago, we heard Benjamin Netanyahu a statement from the Israeli prime minister saying that Israel is to begin negotiations for ceasefire. this amid large protests in Tel Aviv. What exactly can we read into those comments from Netanyahu Noga? Good evening, Sharon. Well, the short version, the short answer to your question is Netanyahu is not accepting the ceasefire deal which was accepted by Hamas earlier this week on the basis of the same uh prisoners for Palestinian prisoners for Israeli hostages arrangement that Netanyahu himself had accepted way back in January. In this statement, he put out an extremely ambiguous statement tonight, which in effect simply ignores the ceasefire that was presented to Israel on Monday by the United States, Qatar, and Doha. Instead of giving any Israeli response to this ceasefire, what he does is he says that he has just arrived at a cabinet meeting to approve military plans to quote, “take over Gaza City to defeat Hamas.” And then he added, as if there were no current agreements on the table, he added, I have ordered, unclear whom, to begin immediate negotiations for the release of all our hostages and to bring an end to the war on terms acceptable to Israel. Why is this a rejection of the current plan? Because the current ceasefire plan does not entail either an end to the war or the release of all Israeli hostages. To the contrary, following Netanyahu’s own demands, it was a partial deal. Um, it was uh I’m speaking about it in the past tense. Perhaps I’ve taken a step too far. It’s a deal in which only 10 uh of the living Israeli hostages would be released, about half of the ones known to be alive, and that in which Israel would absolutely not declare an end to the war, but simply redeploy for a period of 60 days. That is what he requested before. So in a way, Netanyahu is kind of calling the bluff of all of the mediating nations and of Hamas and saying, “Let’s start negotiations again on my terms.” That’s what he means by terms acceptable to Israel. Those terms, as we know, include a permanent Israeli military takeover of Gaza, include the disarmament of Hamas, um, and other terms, for example, that neither Hamas nor the Palestinian Authority will eventually take part in Gaza. All of these terms acceptable to Netanyahu, we know for months are not acceptable either to Hamas or to some of the mediators like Egypt uh and Qatar who do want to see the Palestinian Authority take over eventually in Gaza. So for now, what we have is a no from Prime Minister Netanyahu. Although of course there is a tiny possibility still available in which perhaps the mediating nations will say, “Okay, we’ll take you up on it. Send a negotiating team and we’ll start from zero.” That possibility exists. But meanwhile, he is currently approving the plans to invade and take over Gaza City. And no, how’s all of this likely to be responded to by people there in Israel? We see Israeli ground forces already operating in a neighborhood in the southern part of Gaza City. Also, are we any clearer about when they’re going to launch a broader assault there? We’re not at all clearer. Everything uh right now is in Israel to do with the war is sort of bathed in this blanket of confusion. What we do have are the families, all of them, many of them, and thousands of other Israelis currently again protesting outside the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv. And I think it’s important to note the way in which Prime Minister Netanyahu has handcuffed these families for months and months and months. They have been de demanding a comprehensive deal, a deal that will free all of their loved ones. a and a deal that would bring an end to the war. We saw just on Sunday night almost half a million Israelis on the streets demanding an end to the war. Netanyahu kept mum this entire week and now he appears to be agreeing with them. It will be very difficult for the family members of hostages to come out and say no we don’t want a comprehensive deal. On the other hand, he is rejecting a deal currently on the table and available that could have seen or could still see Israeli hostages released as early as this weekend. And that is what they have been begging for. So he has really manicled them in a way and we have to see I expect that there will be very large protests this weekend in Israel but we have to see how uh the our understanding of this uh enigmatic statement by the prime minister develops over the next few hours. No, thanks so much for analyzing all of that. That is our correspondent based in Jerusalem.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday said he had ordered the beginning of immediate negotiations to release the remaining Israeli hostages in Gaza, rejecting a ceasefire proposal presented earlier this week. FRANCE 24’s Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.
#Israel #Gaza #hostages

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