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Senior Biden Admin Official Provides New Details on Hostage Negotiations
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands before a map of the Gaza Strip, telling viewers that Israel must retain control over the “Philadelphi corridor,” a strategic area along the territory’s border with Egypt, during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
JNS.org — In a background call with journalists on Wednesday, a senior Biden administration official provided new details about the proposed ceasefire-for-hostages deal between Israel and Hamas.
The senior official described for the first time the specific elements of the proposal and what parts of the deal continue to stall negotiations seeking to secure the release of the remaining 101 hostages.
“The deal has 18 total paragraphs,” the senior official said. “Fourteen of those paragraphs are finished.”
“You’ll sometimes hear Hamas say they agreed to a deal on July 2. Let me just explain that,” the senior official said. “There’s 18 paragraphs. Fourteen paragraphs are identical. One paragraph has a very technical fix, and the other three paragraphs have to do with the exchange of prisoners to hostages, which even Hamas’s own text of July 2 explicitly says it has to still be negotiated.”
“So, basically, 90 percent of this deal has been agreed,” the senior official said.
Biden administration officials have previously refused to describe the precise contents of the deal amid ongoing negotiations.
“I’m sure you’re all curious as to what that proposal says and what’s in it, and I’m sure you’re also not going to be surprised by the fact that I’m not going to get into that detail,” John Kirby, the White House national security communications advisor, said on Tuesday during a press call.
The senior administration official who spoke on Wednesday with reporters cited Hamas’s execution of six hostages, media reports that the official said are misleading, and the dispute over whether Israel can retain control of the Egypt-Gaza border as the reasons to offer greater clarity about the status of negotiations.
Under the multi-phased deal, the 101 remaining hostages would be released in exchange for some 800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli prisons. Wounded Hamas fighters would also be permitted to leave the Gaza Strip for medical treatment, the senior US official said.
Phase one of the deal would see the release of all of the remaining women hostages, including female soldiers, men over 50, and the ill and wounded.
The official said that Israel and Hamas agreed “many months ago” to the number of Palestinian prisoners that would be released in phase one, including a portion of the 500 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel for serious terrorist offenses.
‘We all know who we’re dealing with’
Hamas’s execution of six hostages this past week, however, complicates that potential exchange, according to the senior administration official.
“There’s a list of hostages and we all have it, and Hamas has had it and all the parties have had it, and there’s now fewer names on the list,” the official said. “It’s horrific.”
“Hamas is threatening to execute more hostages,” the official said. “This cannot be lost in what we’re dealing with here. We all know who we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with a terrorist group.”
“It’s also called into question Hamas’s readiness to do a deal of any kind,” the senior official added, of Hamas executing the hostages.
The official does not believe that the release of Palestinians serving life sentences or the Israeli “veto” over which prisoners get released pose a major obstacle but said that Hamas had made proposals about prisoner-for-hostage exchanges that were “complete non-starters.” The official didn’t detail the nature of those proposals.
The official said that one part of the deal, which has been agreed to, relates to humanitarian aid provisions for Gaza.
During the 42-day phase one, 600 aid trucks would enter the Palestinian enclave daily, including 50 trucks of fuel. Other aid provisions in phase one include immediate entry of heavy equipment to clear rubble and rehabilitate infrastructure and hospitals, as well as 60,000 temporary homes and 200,000 tents.
Debate about Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor — the Israel Defense Forces’ name for the Egypt-Gaza border — has become a highly publicized dispute in the negotiations and Israeli domestic politics, and has overshadowed the agreed-upon humanitarian elements, according to the administration official.
“Nothing in the agreement mentions the Philadelphi Corridor,” the senior official said. “What the agreement says is a ‘withdrawal from all densely-populated areas,’ and a dispute emerged whether the Philadelphi Corridor, which is effectively a road on the border of Gaza and Egypt, is a densely-populated area.”
“Based on that dispute, the Israelis, over the course of the last couple weeks, produced a proposal by which they would significantly reduce their presence on the corridor,” the official said. The official described that proposal as “technically consistent with the deal,” but Hamas has not agreed to it.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made control of the corridor an increasingly central demand, going so far as to explain its significance in a presentation to the press on Wednesday.
“If you leave this corridor, you can’t prevent Hamas from not only smuggling weapons in, you can’t prevent them from smuggling terrorists, hostages out,” the prime minister said. “If you want to release the hostages, you’ve got to control the Philadelphi Corridor.”
“Gaza must be demilitarized,” Netanyahu added. “It can only be demilitarized if the Philadelphi Corridor remains under firm control and is not a supply line for armaments and terror equipment.”
Asked about Netanyahu’s statements, the senior administration official said the corridor was not the only sticking point in the talks and that it was not “particularly helpful” to stake out “concrete positions in the middle of a negotiation.”
“I’ve never been involved in a negotiation where basically every day there’s a public statement about the details of the negotiations, because it makes it difficult, especially in a hostage negotiation,” the official said. “In my view, the less that’s said about particular issues the better.”
The senior administration official also hit back at Israeli politicians who have suggested that the deal would undermine Israeli security.
“I have seen some Israeli ministers say this deal somehow would sacrifice Israel’s security,” the official said. “That is just fundamentally, totally untrue.”
“If anything, I would argue that not getting into this deal is more of a threat to Israel’s long-term security than actually concluding the deal,” the official said. “That includes on the issues of the Philadelphi Corridor and the border of Egypt.”
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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