Unbelievable! US-Hamas Truce Without Israel
Unbelievable! US-Hamas Truce Without Israel
Sidelined Without Knowledge or Approval
US failed to inform Israel before Hamas truce announcement
Jerusalem was surprised to hear of the terror group's acceptance of a proposal that was different from the latest one on the table.
JNS | 5-7-2024 | Condensed
The Biden administration did not inform Jerusalem in advance of Hamas’s “acceptance” on Monday of the latest hostage deal proposed by Egypt and Qatar, Axios reported on Tuesday, citing three Israeli officials.
The officials told the U.S. news outlet that the government was caught off guard by the Hamas announcement, the text of which it didn’t receive from the mediators until an hour after the terrorist group released its statement.
Upon reading the statement, Israeli officials reportedly were surprised to see “many new elements” that were not contained in the previous proposal to which Israel had agreed and was presented to Hamas by the American, Egyptian and Qatari mediators 10 days earlier.
“It looked like a whole new proposal,” one official told Axios political correspondent Barak Ravid.
Two senior Israeli officials said that the Egyptians gave Hamas a new proposal without coordinating it with Jerusalem. Another source familiar with the negotiations said that the U.S. invited Israel to Cairo over the weekend, but Jerusalem declined to send a delegation. One Israeli official said that it was a mistake not to have an Israeli team present at the talks.
According to the Israeli official, CIA Director William Burns and other Biden administration officials involved in the negotiations knew about the new proposal, but didn’t inform the Israeli side. The final version of the proposal was hashed out in Doha on Monday morning with the Biden administration’s knowledge.
Burns spoke on the phone with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant on Monday morning, a source said, but Gallant was also surprised when Hamas released the statement.
“Israel got played” by the U.S. and the mediators, two Israeli officials said. They drafted “a new deal” and were not transparent about it.
The Israeli officials said they suspect that the Biden administration gave Hamas guarantees via the Egyptians and Qataris about ending the war, which the terror group demands but which Jerusalem says is a nonstarter until Hamas is defeated, the hostages are released and Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.
“We think the Americans conveyed the message to Hamas that it will be okay when it comes to ending the war,” one senior Israeli official said.
A U.S. official told Axios that the stated goal of the Biden administration is to “ensure that an initial six-week ceasefire would be built into something more enduring. The agreement lays out three phases for this purpose and it would be our aim to see all three phases completed with all the hostages returned to their families.”
According to a report in Reuters, citing a senior Israeli official, Jerusalem was only sending a team of mid-ranking officials to Cairo on Tuesday to attempt to see if Hamas can be persuaded to change its position on the latest offer, which Jerusalem cannot accept.
“This delegation is made up of mid-level envoys. Were there a credible deal in the offing, the principals would be heading the delegation,” the official told Reuters.
Meanwhile, the New York Times, citing two sources familiar with the talks, reported that Hamas told mediators on Monday that some of the 33 hostages who would be released in the first phase of a ceasefire deal would not be alive.
The first group of the more than 100 captives still held in Gaza since the Oct. 7 massacre includes women, elderly men, the ill and wounded. Israel initially demanded 40 hostages in the “humanitarian” category, but came to believe that Hamas did not have that many who fit the criteria.
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Israel will be abandoned by all the nations in the end times. God alone will stand with Israel. When all seems lost, He will destroy Israel's enemies. I read the book.
This looks a lot like the way our government passes legislation in the US. We elect people to office based on what we want them to do. The elected representatives say they will fight to advance our stated positions. Then, in the dark of night, something entirely different is enacted and we are supposed to be happy to go along with what was done. Well, we're not happy and I doubt that Israel is happy with this agreement that was forged without them having a say in what was in it.
How ridiculous is it to expect an agreement between two parties to be made without the consent of one of the parties?
This was obviously done with the intent of making Israel out to be the war-mongers that Hama is. It was then paraded out by the left-wing media as a great solution to the problem that no peace loving country could reject. The problem is that once you poke the bear hard enough, he is not going to stop getting some payback when he gets in a position to be able to stop the poking for a very long time. Hamas wants to put their hands up and have it all to stop just as they are about to get their just desserts. I don't think so... Israel should exterminate all the Hamassholes so they never rise to power again.