Last mile hurdle? Netanyahu says Israeli Cabinet won’t take up Gaza peace deal until Hamas backs down

The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) of Israel has said that Cabinet votes on the deal with Hamas have been postponed for now.

The Israeli PMO said in a statement on Thursday that Hamas has reneged on understandings reached during negotiations and Cabinet votes were being delayed until the last-minute “crisis” is sorted.

The development comes as the Israeli government was to hold votes on the deal in two meetings on Thursday . Firstly, PM Benjamin Netanyahu would have convened the Security Cabinet to hold a vote on the deal and, once approved by the Security Cabinet, he would have convened the full Cabinet for a vote on the deal. Now, it is not certain if votes would be held today.

The development also comes at a time when Netanyahu’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has convened a meeting of his extremist Religious Zionism party. Smotrich has publicly opposed the deal and has threatened to quit the government if the deal is approved. It is expected that the party would formally decide in the meeting that it would quite the government in opposition to the deal with Hamas.

Netanyahu’s office said that Hamas was trying “to extort last minute concessions”, according to Associated Press.

Notably, even as mediators Qatar and Egypt announced the deal on Wednesday along with the United States , which had been facilitating the talks, Qatari PM Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said that the final details were still being worked out. He said once those details would be worked out and the deal would be approved internally by the Israeli government, the deal would go into effect on Sunday (January 19).

Now, the PMO has said that until Hamas accepts “all elements” of the deal that being negotiated, there will not be any vote.

“Hamas is reneging on the understandings and creating a last-minute crisis that is preventing an agreement. The Israeli cabinet will not convene until the mediators notify Israel that Hamas has accepted all elements of the agreement," said the PMO, according to The Times of Israel.

Separately, The Jerusalem Post reported that the last-minute crisis is about the identity of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for the release of hostages in captivity in Gaza under the deal.

The newspaper quoted the PMO as saying that while it had been agreed certain type of prisoners would not be released, Hamas now wants to have an absolute veto on prisoners to be released.

“Contrary to an explicit clause that gives Israel veto power over the release of mass murderers who are symbols of terror, Hamas demands to dictate the identity of these terrorists. The Prime Minister instructed the negotiating team to stand firm on the agreed understandings and to outright reject Hamas’s last-minute extortion attempts,” said the PMO, as per the newspaper.

The so-called last-minute crisis is not the only problem. Netanyahu’s far-right Smotrich has rejected the deal and has threatened to topple the government if the deal goes through. Even as the report of last-minute drama around the deal emerged, Smotrich called a meeting of his Religious Zionism party in which the party is expected to announce withdrawal from the government.

Party MP Zvi Sukkot told Kan broadcaster that “in all likelihood we will resign from the government”. He further said that the party was there “to change the DNA of the State of Israel” and not just to fill seats in the coalition.

Smotrich’s fellow extremist minister Itamar Ben Gvir has also opposed the deal and is expected to join him in quitting the government.

In the wake of these developments, it is believed that Netanyahu would not hold votes on the deal until Smotrich gives a final answer on whether his party would stay in the government or not if the deal is approved.