Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu views a plan outlined by US President Joe Biden for a truce in Gaza and hostage release deal as “partial”, a government spokesman said Monday.
Biden on Friday presented what he labelled an Israeli three-phase plan that would eventually end the fighting, free all hostages held by Palestinian fighters and lead to the reconstruction of the devastated Gaza Strip without Hamas in power.
“The outline that President Biden presented is partial,” government spokesman David Mencer quoted Netanyahu as saying, adding in a press briefing that “the war will be stopped for the purpose of returning the hostages” after which discussions will follow on how to achieve Israel’s goal of eliminating Hamas.
Netanyahu, in a separate statement issued by his office, said that “claims that we have agreed to a ceasefire without our conditions being met are incorrect”.
The prime minister’s far-right coalition partner National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said Monday that the latest plan was “irresponsible”.
Ben Gvir added that the proposal laid out by Biden would mean “the end of the war without achieving the objective that the cabinet clearly set: the destruction of Hamas”.
If Netanyahu would “sign on an irresponsible deal”, Ben Gvir said his party “will break up the government”.
But opposition leader Yair Lapid, a centrist former premier, has said the government “cannot ignore Biden’s important speech”, vowing to back Netanyahu if his far-right coalition partners quit.
The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,190 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.
Hamas also took some 250 hostages, 120 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the army says are dead.
At least 36,479 Palestinians, also mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive since October 7, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-ruled Palestinian territory.
US, Egyptian and Qatari mediation efforts have stalled since a one-week truce in November that saw dozens of hostages freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails and a surge in humanitarian aid deliveries into besieged Gaza.