Benjamin Netanyahu under pressure from far-right allies on Gaza ceasefire deal

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Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday accused Hamas of reneging on parts of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal, as he faced pushback against the US-brokered agreement from his far-right allies.

Israel said it had delayed a cabinet meeting intended to endorse the deal, but Hamas maintained it was committed to the agreement announced by mediators on Wednesday.

US President Joe Biden, president-elect Donald Trump and the prime minister of Qatar, whose countries have been mediating the talks, announced on Wednesday night that Hamas and Israel had reached agreement on a deal that would halt the 15-month war in Gaza and free the 98 hostages still in captivity.

Trump, who was the first leader to hail the deal on Wednesday, has put pressure on both Israel and Hamas to agree a deal before his inauguration on Monday.

He has repeatedly warned that there will be “all hell to pay” if the hostages are not released by January 20. The ceasefire is supposed to come into effect and the first hostages released on Sunday.

But Netanyahu’s government, which relies on the support of two far-right parties bitterly opposed to any deal, said final details remained to be sorted out, and on Thursday morning added that Hamas was backtracking.

“Israel will not set a date for a cabinet and government meeting [to approve the deal] until the mediators announce that Hamas has approved all the details of the agreement,” Netanyahu’s office said.

Israel said earlier on Thursday that Hamas was backtracking on the deal by seeking to dictate which Palestinian prisoners should be released in exchange for Israeli hostages.

Netanyahu’s statement came as a member of finance minister Bezalel Smotrich’s far-right Religious Zionist party said on Thursday morning that it could leave the government if it approved a deal.

Speaking to Kan Radio, Zvi Sukkot, a lawmaker from the party, said it would “in all likelihood” resign from the government if a deal was approved, since its mission was to “change the DNA of Israel”, not just make up numbers in the coalition.

Smotrich himself has repeatedly criticised the deal, and on Wednesday night branded it “bad and dangerous”. He said his condition for remaining in the government was that Israel should be able to resume the war in Gaza “at full force” once the hostages had been freed.

The agreement offers hope of a halt — and potentially an end — to a brutal war that has become the deadliest chapter in the decades-long history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The war has left Gaza in ruins, consumed Israeli society and pushed the Middle East to the brink of a full-blown war.

If the deal is implemented as planned, it will involve an initial 42-day truce during which 33 hostages, including children, women, the sick and the elderly, will be released in intervals.

In exchange, Palestinians would be freed from Israeli jails, an influx of aid allowed into Gaza and there would be a partial Israeli withdrawal from the enclave.

By the 16th day of the truce, Israel and Hamas are scheduled to begin negotiating the second phase of the deal, which would involve the release of the remaining living hostages, a full Israeli withdrawal and an end to the war.

Trump has argued that the agreement is a consequence of his victory in November’s US presidential election, while Biden characterised it as “one of the toughest negotiations I have ever experienced”.

The deal has also been welcomed by Iran, which has hailed it as a “historic victory” for the Palestinian people and as proof that the anti-Israel resistance movement has survived months of destructive war.

The conflict was triggered by Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack on Israel, during which fighters from the Palestinian militant group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.

Israel responded with an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 46,000 people and fuelled a humanitarian catastrophe in the enclave.

Additional reporting by Bita Ghaffari in Tehran