Leaked Documents Vindicate Netanyahu on Ceasefire Deal

By Seth Mandel

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

 

Benjamin Netanyahu has been so universally condemned for allegedly holding up hostage negotiations that I assumed there must have been something to the accusations. But alas, I have relearned an important lesson about assuming.

 

A trio of New York Times reporters have obtained documents relating to the Israel-Hamas “ceasefire” talks. These papers include the Israeli premier’s demands and counteroffers, with the intent to prove that, as the headline has it, “Israel Was Less Flexible in Recent Gaza Cease-Fire Talks, Documents Show.”

 

Yet the facts of the story show Bibi to be completely reasonable, even according to his own frustrated hostage negotiators who have been painting him as intransigent in the press for months. The Biden-Harris administration, hellbent on portraying Israel as the problem, looks silly here as well.

 

Here’s the build-up: “Mr. Netanyahu has, in fact, added new conditions to Israel’s demands, additions that his own negotiators fear have created extra obstacles to a deal. According to unpublished documents reviewed by The New York Times that detail Israel’s negotiating positions, Israel relayed a list of new stipulations in late July to American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators that added less flexible conditions to a set of principles it had made in late May.”

 

And here’s the try-not-to-laugh payoff, beginning a full 20 paragraphs into the story:

 

For months, Israel said it would agree to a cease-fire only if its soldiers could screen the returning Palestinians for weapons as they moved from southern to northern Gaza.

 

Then, in its May proposal, Israel softened that demand. While its position paper still stated that the returnees should not be “carrying arms while returning,” it removed the explicit requirement that Israeli forces screen them for weapons. That made the policy seem more symbolic than enforceable, prompting Hamas to agree to it.

 

Israel’s July letter revived the question of enforcement, stating that the screening of people returning to the north would need to be “implemented in an agreed upon manner.”

 

So Netanyahu’s “demand” was that returnees be checked for weapons by some mutually agreed-upon process, with Hamas’s full consent.

 

Frankly I am surprised Netanyahu is being that flexible about checking returnees. The only reason Hamas would oppose including an even symbolic method of ensuring that returnees cannot be armed is that members of Hamas will be “returning” to northern Gaza along with the residents. That’s it—that’s the only reason. Hamas doesn’t want arms it cannot control in the hands of Palestinians who do not answer to it. Bibi’s demand is that Hamas at least agree on paper to an actual ceasefire, knowing full well that in any deal there would be holes a Hamasnik can drive a jeep through.

 

Speaking of which. Another sticking point in the negotiations appears to be whether Israel will abdicate its stewardship of a tunnel system Hamasniks have been driving jeeps through. In May, the Times writes, Israel “had suggested” it would withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor. Yet now, Netanyahu wants to keep IDF troops in the vicinity of this piece of the Gaza-Egypt border. What gives?

 

Well, a lot can happen in three months. Since that May proposal, Israel has discovered—and made public its discovery, which is key—of two dozen smuggling tunnels running under that part of the border with Egypt. The IDF even released a photo of a military truck driving through one. These tunnels are for moving weapons, terrorists, and supplies from Egypt to Gaza. They are quite literally Hamas’s lifelines.

 

The discovery of these tunnels was not necessarily surprising, but they do represent a black eye for Egypt, which has now been revealed to have been keeping Hamas alive and enabling it to keep the region at war. Now that the public is aware of the Egypt-Hamas collusion along the border, to whom should Israel hand off control of that crossing? Egypt? Hamas? It sounds like a rhetorical question.

 

Lastly, there’s this: “Senior Israeli officials familiar with the latest negotiations, as well as leaders in Israel’s security forces, agree in principle with Mr. Netanyahu that it would be better to maintain checkpoints to screen people for weapons. But they also believe that it is not worth holding up a deal over this point, and want Mr. Netanyahu to back down ahead of the planned meeting on Thursday.”

 

So: Netanyahu—according to the negotiators who have been criticizing him to the press—is correct on the particulars, but they want him to back down anyway. That’s a legitimate position: They acknowledge the security threat the deal would pose but they believe the harm is outweighed by what Israel would be getting in return.

 

That calculation is at the heart of every such deal Israel makes with its enemies. Netanyahu himself has made such deals—most notably, the one in which October 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar was freed. Perhaps that experience has made Netanyahu more hesitant to dismiss the security ramifications of these tradeoffs. But let’s be clear that that tradeoff is what we’re discussing, not some imagined intransigence by the prime minister.