Sunday February 9, 2025 | TheNewsDESK
As an Israeli delegation arrived in Qatar on Saturday night to negotiate the next phase ongoing ceasefire-hostage deal, reports in Hebrew media said Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aiming for the collapse of the agreement before its second phase and gave the delegation “no real mandate” for negotiations, The Times Of Israel reports.
The Haaretz daily reported Sunday, quoting unnamed Israeli sources, that the delegation to Doha is “a show,” and that “Netanyahu is signaling quite clearly that he does not want to move on to the next phase.”
“He is sending a team without a mandate and without the ability to do anything,” the sources were quoted as saying, adding that Netanyahu believes the ceasefire has been bad for him politically.
“Right-wing voters see on the ground that we have not defeated Hamas and its operatives continue to walk around with weapons. The signs on the stages in Gaza at the hostage release ceremonies even mock Netanyahu and his slogan of ‘total victory,’” one source said.
The source was referencing images of Saturday’s hostage release ceremony, which saw captives Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56, returned to Israel.
On the stage at Hamas’s propaganda-filled handover event was a sign with Netanyahu’s face and his trademark wartime slogan “total victory,” apparently mocking the prime minister.
Citing a separate source, Haaretz reported that Netanyahu’s conduct may even collapse the ceasefire before the first phase of the deal is over, saying that once Hamas realizes that Israel does not intend to get to the second stage, the terror group could refuse to release more hostages and collapse the deal entirely.
“Hamas is not stupid,” the source was quoted as saying. “They see the politicization of the negotiations, the placement of Netanyahu confidants Ron Dermer and Gal Hirsch [at the helm of negotiations], the threats by [Finance Minister Bezalel] Smotrich and the right-wing ministers that they will dissolve the government. They understand where this is going.”
“As soon as [Hamas] realizes that there will not be a second phase, they will not complete the first phase either,” the source alleged.
According to Channel 12, Netanyahu sent the delegation to Doha only to “discuss the technical details of the agreement” and not to actually negotiate the deal’s second stage.
Israeli officials were quoted by the outlet as saying that “this delegation has no real mandate. It will not deal with anything related to the second phase. [US special envoy Steve] Witkoff asked for a delegation to leave and Netanyahu is doing so, in part to avoid giving Hamas reasons to blow up the deal.”
The report added that among the Israeli delegation is the government’s hostage point-man Hirsch and a senior Shin Bet official, who went in place of the head of the security agency, Ronen Bar, whom Netanyahu removed from his negotiating role.
According to the Prime Minister’s Office, upon Netanyahu’s return from the United States he will hold a cabinet discussion on the deal’s second phase.
Senior Israeli officials cited by the Walla news site said that the delegation was being dispatched as a “symbolic warm-up trip,” intended primarily to demonstrate goodwill toward US President Donald Trump, as he has expressed a desire to see the deal carried out in full.
A senior Hamas official warned in an interview with AFP on Saturday that Israel’s “lack of commitment” to the second phase of the talks was putting the entire ceasefire deal in danger of collapse.
Asked by AFP whether there is a possibility that the terror group will return to war should the ceasefire agreement collapse, Hamas politburo official Basem Naim said that the “delay and lack of commitment in implementing the first phase,” as well as the attempts to “pressure the Palestinian negotiators upon entering the second phase, certainly exposes this agreement to danger and thus it might stop and collapse.”
The agreement is now in its 42-day first phase, during which 33 children, women and older men are supposed to be released in Gaza in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including many terror convicts.
The second phase would see the release of around 24 living male hostages, and some 35 dead hostages, in return for the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza and a permanent ceasefire in the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror onslaught.
Following Saturday’s hostage release, 73 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and five Thai nationals — during the ceasefire, which began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive by troops, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
As Negotiators Arrive In Doha, Sources Say It’s Just For ‘Show,’ PM Aims To Brick Deal
