Jan. 16 (UPI) — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office delayed a cabinet vote Thursday to approve a cease-fire and hostage release deal with Hamas, accusing the group of creating a crisis at the 11th hour by going back on parts of the agreement.
“Hamas is reneging on the understandings and creating a last-minute crisis that is preventing an agreement. Hamas is retracting explicit understandings that were agreed upon with the mediators and Israel in a last-minute attempt at extortion,” Netanyahu’s office said in a statement carried by Israeli media 30 minutes before the cabinet was due to meet.
The statement added that no new date for the meeting would be set until Israel received confirmation from mediators in Qatar that Hamas had approved the agreement in full
Hamas denied the claim with a senior Hamas leader telling the BBC from Doha that the reports were false and that it was fully on board with the deal.
“We are committed to the cease-fire and what is agreed in the cease-fire and what is announced by the mediators.”
However, the BBC added that a source within Hamas had said the group wanted to add a small number of names to a list of Palestinian prisoners to be released from Israeli prisons under the deal, two former Hamas military commanders from the West Bank, in particular.
The Times of Israel also quoted Israeli public television reporting that the meeting was also delayed by uncertainty over whether far-right elements in Netanyahu’s coalition wanting to continue the war would resign in protest.
Netanyahu was said to be holding off on convening his cabinet until he has clarity on whether Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionism Party, will quit which would likely bring down his government.
The long-awaited deal, announced Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden in Washington and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani in Doha, with the first of three phases due to come into effect Sunday, would silence the weapons after a 15-month bloody conflict and eventually see the return of all hostages — alive or dead — in exchange for the release of an unspecified number of Palestinians from Israeli prisons.
The agreement calls for an initial hostage release of 33 of about 100 still being held in Gaza, to include all over-50s and women and children during the first 6-week phase.
Biden said the deal was pretty much the same one he laid out “precise contours of” on May 31 and which the U.N. Security Council backed unanimously but stressed the role of “dogged” American diplomacy” in getting it over the line.
“It is the result not only of the extreme pressure that Hamas has been under and the changed regional equation after a cease-fire in Lebanon and weakening of Iran — but also of dogged and painstaking American diplomacy.”
That effort was said to have been aided by President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming foreign policy team with his soon-to-be Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff working with President Biden’s top Middle East adviser Brett McGurk to push the negotiations forward and ensure continuity amid the transition next week.
Trump has stated that he wanted a deal before he takes office on Monday.
He said Americans would be among those released in the first phase.
