In one of the biggest gambles of his career, The decision to take control of all-important border crossing with Egypt marks one of the biggest gambles of Netanyahu’s long career. Photograph: Amir Cohen/AFP via Getty ImagesWhen the order finally came on Monday, it was within hours of Hamas finally signalling that it had accepted the outlines of a hostage-for-prisoner ceasefire proposal drawn up with mediators.
Netanyahu’s critics cast his decision as a cynical ploy to assuage his far-right coalition partners and in effect scupper a hostage deal that might bring his own government down; to his sympathisers it was a calculated move to temper Hamas’s demands. Gantz alleged Hamas had approved terms that did not “correspond to the dialogue that has taken place so far with the mediators”.
The mediators sought to allay Hamas’s concerns by reiterating that the reference to the goal of a “sustainable calm” during the second phase of the deal – language Israel had previously accepted – was an assurance intended to create conditions for the end of the conflict. “He doesn’t want to pay the price for something he’ll get for free ... He thinks the world will bring Israel to stop,” a person familiar with Israel’s war plans said about Sinwar, one of the masterminds of the October 7th attack on Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage, according to Israeli officials.
The fate of the negotiations now hangs on fine details, according to one diplomat involved in the frantic shuttle diplomacy. The draft proposal broadly offers the chance for 33 Israeli hostages – including women, children, the elderly and wounded – to be freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners; permission for Gazans to return to the north of the strip; and a surge in humanitarian aid.
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