Netanyahu postpones Gaza ceasefire vote over last-minute disagreements

A day after a ceasefire agreement to end 15 months of war in Gaza was announced by the mediators in the conflict — Qatar, the U.S. and Egypt — and applauded by the international community, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday that it would not submit it to a vote before his government (as was expected to happen during the day) until the negotiators in Doha resolve the last-minute discrepancies that have arisen over its implementation. Netanyahu, backed by two far-right coalition partners opposed to the pact, accuses the Islamist movement of trying to backtrack on previous commitments and extract concessions. No independent information points in that direction and Izzat al-Rishq, a senior member of Hamas’s Political Bureau, underlined his group’s “commitment” to the agreement on the social network Telegram. Since the announcement of the ceasefire, which sparked scenes of jubilation in Gaza, Israeli airstrikes have killed 73 people in the Strip.

Netanyahu is one of the few leaders who has not publicly commented on the deal. His office made it clear on Wednesday night that he will only do so when everything has been finalized. The last-minute complications do not center on the text itself, but on the process of selecting the Palestinian prisoners who would be released in exchange for the gradual return of the nearly 100 remaining hostages in the Strip who Hamas has held since its attack against Israel on October 7, 2023.

Netanyahu accused Hamas on Thursday of “creating a last-minute crisis” and “breaching parts of the agreement […] in an effort to extract last-minute concessions.” “The Israeli Cabinet will not meet until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement,” his office added.

On the Israeli side, the official green light for the agreement does not come from the mediators in Doha, but from the security cabinet and then from the government as a whole. The first meeting was initially scheduled for Thursday morning. It was then postponed to the afternoon and is now up in the air. The impasse jeopardizes the timetable that Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed Al-Thani himself presented when he announced the agreement at a press conference in Doha: it was hoped it would come into effect as early as Sunday. The Israeli delegation, headed by Mossad chief David Barnea, is still in Qatar and will only take part in the meeting via video conference, reported the Yediot Aharonot newspaper.

The numbers of the government vote suggest that it will be approved without any difficulty. In fact, it is expected that a large majority will vote in favor as the opposition has been asking for a cessation of hostilities for some time. Only Netanyahu’s two far-right coalition partners are opposed: Religious Zionism and Jewish Strength. The leader of the former, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, has called the agreement “bad and dangerous,” but has been ambiguous about whether he would leave the coalition if it is approved, which is the real key to the matter. The ultra-nationalist party is meeting to assess its next steps and hundreds of people have started a march against the pact. The Israeli president, Isaac Herzog, has asked the members of the Knesset to ratify the agreement because there is no “greater moral, human, Jewish and Israeli task” than bringing back the hostages.

That task is covered in the first and second phases of the agreement. The text states that the first stage will last six weeks, during which Hamas will hand over 33 hostages: women, children, the sick and wounded, and men aged over 50. The first hostages to be returned will be three civilian women and, seven days later, a further four. When the hostages who are still alive have been returned, it will be the turn of the corpses, whose number is unknown but is estimated at a third.

During that month and a half, Israel will begin a gradual withdrawal of its troops from Gaza, will start releasing Palestinian prisoners (some of whom will have to go into exile) and will allow displaced people from northern Gaza to return to their homes.

Despite the last-minute issues, the Israeli army has already begun setting up a compound near Gaza so that the hostages can be reunited with their families as soon as they are released. However, it is assumed that some are injured and will need urgent medical attention, and these will be immediately transferred to hospitals.

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