Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was busy on Wednesday parrying attacks against his government from leftist elements in Israel over the continuing failure to reach a hostage release and ceasefire deal with the Hamas terrorist organization.
Netanyahu was accused on a televised Israeli newscast Wednesday of consistently acting to “torpedo” any possible agreement since December 2023, when Hamas ended the only hostage release and temporary ceasefire deal reached since the start of the war.
That seven-day deal during November included the release of 81 Israeli hostages and 24 foreign nationals in a swap that freed three Palestinian Authority terrorists incarcerated in Israeli prisons for every hostage released by the terrorists. However, Hamas violated the terms and ended the agreement by offering to return the bodies of seven women and three living hostages, rather than the agreed-upon swap for 10 living hostages. Senior Israeli security officials told Channel 12 News they feared Hamas would simply shoot the seven women that intelligence agents knew to be alive, if Israel agreed to the change. Moreover, Hamas categorized all the young women as soldiers, rather than the civilians that most of them were. Hamas immediately resumed its attacks.
“The fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has acceded to every American proposal for releasing the hostages despite the ultimatum from elements in the coalition completely refutes the claim that he has ‘torpedoed’ any deal whatsoever due to political considerations,” the Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement after the report on Wednesday night.
“On April 27th, the prime minister conveyed to the mediator a framework for releasing the hostages, which Secretary of State Blinken defined as being a very generous proposal.
“On May 31st, the Prime Minister agreed to the US proposal, and on August 16th, he agreed to the American ‘final bridging proposal.’
“June 12th, Secretary of State Blinken said that Israel had agreed to the proposal while Hamas had not. On August 28th, the Deputy Director of the CIA said that Israel was showing a seriousness in the negotiations that the leader of Hamas would have to respond to.
“On September 9th, US Special Envoy to the Middle East McGurk said that there was no hostage release deal only because of Hamas’s refusal. Also on September 9th, even Benny Gantz admitted that, ‘Hamas has not accepted the framework for months and the world is expected to back Israel,'” the PMO pointed out.
“The false claims in the media against Prime Minister Netanyahu echo the propaganda of the Hamas terrorist organization and invert reality,” the PMO said, emphasizing that Netanyahu “has already brought about the release of 154 hostages, 117 of whom are alive,” and pledging to “continue to utilize all means” to release the remaining hostages.
“Whoever wants to assist in the effort to release our hostages needs to pressure the murderer [Yahya] Sinwar and not the prime minister of Israel,” Netanyahu’s office urged.
