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Benjamin Netanyahu has said his cabinet will not meet to vote on the ceasefire deal intended to pause the war in Gaza until “Hamas accepts all elements of the agreement”, in a move that threatens to derail months of work to end the brutal 15-month conflict.
The unexpected delay has sparked fears that last-minute disagreements between Israel and Hamas or hardline opposition could still scuttle the deal, although senior US officials insisted the hard-won ceasefire would go into effect on Sunday as planned.
Speaking at a briefing at the state department, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said he was “very confident” that the ceasefire would go forward and he “fully expects that implementation will begin, as we said, on Sunday”.
The announcement from the Israeli prime minister’s office on Thursday morning came before a scheduled security cabinet and wider government meeting in which ministers were expected to ratify the deal reached in the Qatari capital, Doha, on Wednesday night.
A vote is now expected on Friday morning, Israeli media reported.
Netanyahu’s office said that “Hamas has reneged on parts of the agreement reached with the mediators and Israel in an effort to extort last-minute concessions,” adding that the situation had created a “last-minute crisis”.
Senior Hamas official Izzat el-Reshiq said via the group’s Telegram channel a few minutes after the Israeli announcement that Hamas was committed to the ceasefire agreement. Israeli media reported on Thursday night, citing anonymous government sources, that the disagreement had been resolved.
Without specifying the dispute, Blinken confirmed that there had been a “loose end” between the sides in the complex negotiations, which have included Israel and Hamas, as well as mediators from the US, Qatar and Egypt.
“We’re tying up that loose end as we speak,” he said, adding that he had been on the phone all morning and held direct discussions with senior US envoy Brett McGurk and the Qatari government.
John Kirby, a spokesperson for the US National Security Council, said there were some “implementing details that still need to be ironed out” but the US was “confident that we’re going to be able to start implementing it on Sunday”.
In Gaza, fighting has continued despite expectations of a ceasefire, which it is still believed will go into effect on Sunday. The civil defence agency said on Thursday that at least 77 people had been killed and 230 injured by Israeli airstrikes that pounded several areas of the Palestinian territory overnight.
The Israeli military said it had struck approximately 50 militant targets across the Gaza Strip over the past day, including weapons storage facilities and rocket launch sites.
Netanyahu’s office did not initially specify which parts of the deal had hit a roadblock, but said later on Thursday that Hamas had challenged Israel’s authority to veto the release of a certain number of prisoners classified as mass murderers and seen as “symbols of terror”.
Israel’s Kan Radio reported on Thursday that the issue was related to the far-right cabinet minister Bezalel Smotrich’s opposition to the deal. Smotrich has been highly critical of earlier proposed deals with Hamas, although the agreement was expected to be ratified by a large cabinet majority even without the support of the finance minister or his fellow hardliner, Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister.
Netanyahu and his defence minister, Israel Katz, met Smotrich on Wednesday after Ben-Gvir had asked him to join forces and pull their parties out of the coalition – potentially causing the government to fall – if the deal was agreed.
According to an Israeli television report, Smotrich presented Netanyahu with a list of conditions for his support, including a pledge that Israel would return to fighting should Hamas manage to retain control of Gaza, and to strictly limit the quantity of humanitarian aid allowed into the territory.
On Thursday, Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party said in a statement that its condition for remaining in the government would be a return to fighting at the end of the first phase of the deal, in order to destroy Hamas and bring all the hostages back.
Israeli media widely reported this week that the government was prepared to resume hostilities after the end of the first six-week phase of the truce, during which hostages are supposed to be released.
According to Israeli daily Haaretz, Netanyahu’s chief of staff, Yossi Fuchs, said on Wednesday that the deal “includes the option to resume the fighting at the end of phase one if the negotiations over phase two don’t develop in a manner that promises the fulfilment of the war’s goals: military and civil annihilation of Hamas and a release of all hostages”.
The deal finalised in Doha by US, Israeli, Egyptian and Qatari negotiators after weeks of talks largely follows the contours of a truce agreement first set out last May. President Joe Biden had presented the deal as a cornerstone achievement of his administration and called it the result of “dogged and painstaking American diplomacy”.
In the first stage, which is to last 42 days, Hamas has agreed to release 33 hostages including children, women – including female soldiers – and those aged over 50. In exchange, Israel would release 50 Palestinian prisoners for every female Israeli soldier released by Hamas, and 30 for other hostages.
Palestinians displaced from their homes would be allowed to move freely around the Gaza Strip, which Israel has cut into two halves with a military corridor. Wounded people are supposed to be evacuated for treatment abroad, and aid to the territory should increase to 600 trucks a day – above the 500 minimum that aid agencies say is needed to contain Gaza’s devastating humanitarian crisis.
In the second phase, the remaining living hostages would be sent back and a corresponding ratio of Palestinian prisoners would be freed, and Israel would completely withdraw from the territory. The specifics are subject to further negotiations, which are due to start 16 days into the first phase.
The third phase would address the exchange of bodies of deceased hostages and Hamas members, and a reconstruction plan for Gaza would be launched. Arrangements for future governance of the strip remain hazy. The Biden administration and much of the international community have advocated for the semi-autonomous West Bank-based Palestinian Authority, which lost control of Gaza to Hamas in a brief civil war in 2007, to return to the strip. Israel, however, has repeatedly rejected the suggestion.
More than 15 months of war has killed more than 46,000 Palestinians and laid waste to most of Gaza’s infrastructure. The international court of justice is studying claims that Israel has committed genocide.
About 1,200 people in Israel were killed and another 250 taken hostage in the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 that triggered the war. One hundred of the hostages were freed in exchange for 240 women and children held in Israeli jails as the result of a ceasefire deal struck in November 2023 that collapsed after a week.
The Gaza war has drawn in Iran, which is committed to Israel’s destruction, as well as Tehran’s allies in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, destablising the region. It has also led to political fallout and mass protests across the world over western support for Israel.
