Passover Intermediate Days, 2024
After months of insistence, the security establishment submitted a recommendation for a partial withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor, which would make a breakthrough in negotiations for a deal possible. At noon, the War Cabinet convened. Here is a summary of what happened there, being published here for the first time.
Shin Bet Director Ronen Bar said that efforts should be made to reach a deal quickly. IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi agreed and recommended that Benjamin Netanyahu take advantage of the deal and the temporary ceasefire to shift the focus of the campaign northward. Gadi Eisenkot spoke about the MABAM, which was hindering progress. MABAM? “War between editions,” he explained, with more than a hint of bitterness, referring to the way statements made on Channel 14 dictate the positions taken in the Cabinet. Benny Gantz spoke about the moral obligation to the hostages, and mentioned that we had already lost several of them.
On the other side, Ron Dermer tried to push back, arguing that a deal would not help create legitimacy for entering Rafah afterward. But Netanyahu declared, “The right thing to do at this point is a partial agreement, a halt to the fighting for a few days, either to evacuate Rafah, or to continue [the fighting].” He explicitly wanted a pause in the fighting in order to reach a deal.
And now, pay attention: “We don’t go into details in the Cabinet,” Netanyahu told his ministers and officers, effectively ordering that information be withheld from the country’s highest decision-making forum because his extremist coalition partners sit on it. “We make a general statement,” he added. “There is a mandate; we are moving forward. A deal can be brought to the Cabinet if it is accompanied by [an entry into] Rafah. Draft it and bring it to me for approval.”
At 3:00 p.m., the expanded Cabinet convened. Gantz and Eisenkot did not attend. That was a mistake. Itamar Ben-Gvir complained that terrorists were being captured rather than killed. The IDF chief of staff responded: “We do not kill terrorists who have surrendered.” It is strange that something like this even needs to be stated.
At 4:15 p.m., the meeting was suspended so that Netanyahu could approve the renewed mandate for the negotiating team, against the backdrop of the progress agreed upon earlier that afternoon. His political adviser, Ophir Falk, began applying counter-pressure: We have backed away from red lines.
At 5:00 p.m., the expanded Cabinet meeting resumed. At 5:45 p.m., Bezalel Smotrich began attacking. “There are rumors that you are willing to make a deal in exchange for 20 hostages. If there is a deal, you will no longer have a government.” It turned out that someone had leaked to him the positions discussed that morning.
At that very moment, in timing that could hardly have been more dramatic, Nitzan Alon — head of the Hostages and Missing Persons Directorate — brought Netanyahu the renewed and more flexible mandate for him to sign. Suddenly, Netanyahu stopped and decided not to seek the full Cabinet’s approval for the renewed mandate for the negotiating team.
At the end of the meeting, Smotrich went in to see him and once again threatened to bring down the government. It worked. Netanyahu refused to sign off on the new positions.
At 12:20 a.m., a conference call was arranged with the heads of the security establishment, who pressed for the framework discussed that morning to be advanced. Netanyahu told them he was not prepared to sign. Eisenkot and Gantz only found out about this in the morning. Too late.
Over 22 months of negotiations, this may be the most blatant example of opportunities being thrown away. Not because Netanyahu thought they were bad, but because of political pressure.
But it also helps crack a more difficult puzzle: Why does a smart and experienced senior figure like Brett McGurk, U.S. President Joe Biden’s envoy for these negotiations, say that there was never a complete proposal for a deal from the mediators to which Hamas said “yes” and Israel said “no”? Factually, that is true, but that is not how negotiations work, and he is the first person who should know that.
George Mitchell, the mediator in the Northern Ireland peace agreement, once described the negotiations he led this way: “We had a thousand bad days, and one good day.” When you prevent the sides from moving closer together and dictate the proposals that the mediators will put forward, you make it impossible for the bad days to come to an end and for that one good day to arrive.