Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that he was against the “delusional” outline for a hostage deal that an Israeli delegation was set to negotiate in Qatar on Monday.
The outline, which was proposed in a forum in Paris over the weekend, seemingly involves Hamas releasing 40 hostages including, women, children, female soldiers, and elderly and ill abductees in exchange for a six-week pause in fighting and Israel releasing hundreds of Palestinian terror convicts.
Shas leader Aryeh Deri, an observer on the war cabinet, told the ultra-Orthodox news outlet Kikar HaShabbat on Sunday that there was a “good chance of a deal” happening but that “we are still far from it.”
“We want to create a good deal that will achieve several goals but also be accepted by the Israeli public,” he said of the challenges coming up in the negotiations. “It’s not a simple deal, we don’t have feedback from Hamas yet, everything we do is via mediators.”
Smotrich, however, said in a conference in Jerusalem on Sunday that in his opinion, the outline was not good, adding that “the next deal should be better for us with the ratio of hostages to terrorists and the days of respite for each hostage, certainly not an infinitely worse ratio.”
The finance minister went on to say that as it stood, the current outline saw Hamas gaining more than Israel in the deal and that he would vote against anything similar to it.
He also defended comments last week that he was heavily criticized for in which he said that the hostages were not the most important thing in the war.
“I said that the matter of the hostages is important, but not the most important thing,” he said. “Look at how much fire I took last week just because I said the most logical and correct thing.”
An Israeli delegation was scheduled to head to Qatar on Monday for further negotiations of the outline, while Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani is set to visit Paris on Tuesday and Wednesday.
“Qatar is notably working on the release of the hostages, which is a priority for us,” said a French presidential official. Three French nationals are among those still held by Hamas.
The discussions will also focus on “ongoing efforts to obtain a ceasefire… and enable massive aid to be provided to the Gazan population,” added the official.
Meanwhile, unnamed sources told Channel 12 News on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was intentionally sabotaging the talks in Qatar by setting stricter conditions and revoking the Israeli representatives’ ability to discuss most topics.
According to Channel 12, Netanyahu had set a new condition for a deal ahead of the talks by which Israel would only agree to it if the terrorists convicted of the most serious crimes who would be released from Israeli prisons could be expelled to Qatar.
The report also said that while Israeli negotiators had initially been given the authority to discuss a wide variety of topics, Netanyahu had at the last minute limited them to matters only concerning humanitarian issues such as the number of trucks carrying aid into the Gaza Strip and how much food would be allowed in.
The war began on October 7 when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel in which thousands of terrorists rampaged through southern towns murdering some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 253.
It is believed that 130 of the hostages remain in Gaza — not all of them alive — after 105 civilians were released from Hamas captivity during a weeklong truce in late November. Four hostages were released before that, and three were rescued by troops. The bodies of eight hostages have also been recovered and three hostages were mistakenly killed by the military. One more person has been listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown.
During the November truce, 105 hostages, mostly women and children, were released in groups of 15 or so over a week. For every group of at least 10 hostages released by Hamas, Israel held off fighting in the Gaza Strip and released 50 female and minor Palestinian convicts from prison.
Subsequent negotiations for a new deal to facilitate the release of more hostages have thus far not yielded any results as Hamas kept demanding a permanent ceasefire in exchange for the hostages. Israel has repeatedly said that an end to the war was not a realistic demand and would not agree to any deal that required it.
Meanwhile, pressure has been mounted on Netanyahu’s government to negotiate a deal and secure the release of the remaining hostages.
A group representing their families held a rally in Tel Aviv on Saturday to demand swifter action. The families, together with activists and protesters, have been gathering weekly across Israeli cities to demand an agreement that would free their loved ones.
AFP contributed to this report.