Part II. Parsing the Chaos

Is PM Netanyahu Fighting the Same War as the Nation He Leads?

Before leaving for Washington on July 22, Netanyahu told his team working to make a hostage deal – including Mossad Chief David Barnea – to wait until Thursday before returning to the negotiating table. Wait. Two days.

No reason. Just wait. Let them wait. The negotiators. The hostages. They can wait.

In fact, a “leaked” comment attributed to the Prime Minister in that period had him saying in a meeting that the “hostages were suffering, but not dying.”

Of course, Netanyahu denied having made any such remark, but the sad fact is that very few believe him. He is widely perceived to have demonstrated a consistent callousness towards the fate of the hostages from October 7^th.

As Shira Albag, the mother of 19-year-old Liri, a female soldier taken hostage from her army base on October 7, said recently in a television interview: “We sat across from Bibi in December. He told us, he promised us, that our children would be home in a few days. And we’re now in August.”

In the same discussion on Israel’s channel 13 Liri’s father, Eli Albag expressed the frustration of the nation: “Hamas is broken. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. Bibi keeps on saying – ‘I’ve done this and I’ve done that’. But the one thing he hasn’t done is to bring our children home.”

This was the whole point of the Gaza operation, Shira adds. To bring our hostages home.

What Netanyahu seemed to be working to achieve last week when he told his team to “wait” - was total control. He was not going to allow his speech before Congress and negotiations to proceed simultaneously, lest something transpire at the table that might overshadow his trip and speech. Nope. He intended to mitigate that risk.

As it turned out, President Biden threw a curve ball, announcing that he was stepping down as the presumptive Democratic nominee for President and endorsing VP Harris in his place. And so went the news cycle. No one can control every variable.

Bibi had been expected to return to Israel immediately following his speech on Wednesday, July 24, but then announced he would be traveling to President Trump’s home and political base, Mar-a-Lago, in South Florida, to meet with him on Friday morning. And so, the Prime Minister instructed his negotiators to wait yet another day before returning to the table. Until Friday.

There were reports of Netanyahu setting new red lines for the negotiations and scuttling the progress to date. Then there were reports of Hamas doing the same.

The negotiators went to Rome for one day and returned with nothing.

On the day they returned to Israel, last Saturday, Hizballah murdered twelve children and injured dozens more playing soccer in Majdal Shams. In that moment, everything changed and the hostage talks, yet again, became secondary, or tertiary, in priority.