Today, 5:53 pm
A senior official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office responds to US President Joe Biden’s claim that the premier is not doing enough to secure a hostage deal.
“It is puzzling that President Biden is pressing Prime Minister Netanyahu, who agreed to the US (hostage deal) proposal as early as May 31 and to the US bridging proposal on August 16, and not Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who continues to vehemently refuse any deal,” says the official.
Biden’s admission “is especially dangerous when it is made just days after Hamas executed six Israeli hostages, including an American citizen,” the Israeli official adds, referring to the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
The May 31 US proposal that Netanyahu’s office refers to in this statement was actually a speech Biden gave that exposed details of what was an Israeli hostage deal that Netanyahu had authorized.
That proposal did not include a demand by Israel to maintain control over the Philadelphi Corridor on the Gaza-Egypt border in order to prevent Hamas from smuggling in arms — a demand that Netanyahu began making in July and that has led to an extended impasse in the negotiations that the US and other mediators have since been working to overcome.
The demand has also put Netanyahu at odds with his own security establishment, which has pushed compromising on the issue, arguing that the IDF can return to the corridor if need be but that dragging out the talks over the demand risks the lives of the hostages.
Content retrieved from: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/israeli-official-slams-bidens-claim-netanyahu-not-doing-enough-for-hostage-deal-dangerous/.