Hamas Accepts US-Mediated Ceasefire, Netanyahu Convenes Urgent Security Cabinet Meeting

Officials have told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Hamas has accepted a draft agreement for Gaza ceasefire and hostage release, a day after President Biden said the sides are “on the brink” of reaching a breakthrough agreement.

This indeed may be the closest the negotiating sides have come to reaching a deal, after more than a year of failed attempts. “The ball is now in Hamas’s court. If Hamas accepts, the deal is ready to be concluded and implement it,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said, strongly suggesting that Israel has already accepted. Blinken emphasized the deal is “ready to be concluded and implemented.“

However, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has not confirmed acceptance, and there’s been frustration in the past over last minute additions from the Israeli side which has blown up draft agreements. But a final Netanyahu decision is said to be just hours away, and a deal could be proclaimed by Wednesday morning.

Blinken described that American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators submitted the final draft hostage deal to Israel and Hamas on Sunday, and there have been optimistic statements ever since, especially in Biden’s final foreign policy address on Monday.

Blinken in fresh remarks stressed, “I believe we will get a ceasefire. Whether we get there in the remaining days of our administration, or after January 20, the deal will follow closely the terms of the agreement that President Biden put forward last May and that our administration rallied the world behind.”

Blinken explained that ”at different moments, different parties have made it hard to finalize an agreement or events have delayed or derailed its completion.”

“For the past several months, Hamas has played the spoiler, but over the past several weeks, our intensive efforts have brought us to the brink of full and final agreement,” he said. Of course, the Palestinian side has laid blame squarely on the Israelis.

An urgent meeting of Netanyahu’s security cabinet, set to convene tonight, could give final approval for the deal:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will hold an urgent meeting with top security officials Tuesday night, according to an Israeli official.

The security consultation will be about a potential deal that would release the hostages, the official told CNN. Netanyahu spokesperson Omer Dostri told CNN the meeting will be a “status [of the deal] discussion.”

A last-minute attempt in Mar a Lago to convince Trump not to support the hostage agreement that is about to be signed. Knesset member @MKOhadTal chairman of the “Religious Zionist” faction said at a conference held at this time in Mar-a-Lago that “we want a deal that will return… pic.twitter.com/fXO39p0MlF

— Ariel Kahana אריאל כהנא (@arik3000) January 14, 2025

Trump’s team has an envoy present for these negotiations, but as Times of Israel reports, some Israeli hardline political factions are trying to convince the president-elect, who enters the White House is less than a week, to reject the deal and instead press for Israeli sovereignty over all Palestinian territories:

Religious Zionism lawmaker Ohad Tal calls on US President-elect Donald Trump to oppose the hostage deal that his own envoy Steve Witkoff is currently working to finalize in Doha along with US President Joe Biden’s top aide Brett McGurk.

“The current deal, which was pushed by the Biden administration, is a horrible deal that will roll back all of Israel’s achievements of the past year,” he says at a prayer breakfast at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Tal says that Trump, “more than any other leader in the world,” knows how “to differentiate between good and evil and I call on you from here from this important podium not to support a deal that will leave this total evil of Hamas in power; not to support a deal that will leave back the vast majority of the hostages.”

Calling Trump’s recent electoral win a “spiritual victory for the values we all treasure,” Tal criticizes “wokeism” and says that the incoming administration provides “an opportunity to apply full Israeli sovereignty in Judea and Samaria, the heart of our ancestral homeland.”

Israel extremists on television are blaming Trump for what they say is the imminent cease-fire deal in Gaza, claiming that Trump “forced” the deal on Netanyahu without first letting Israel completely annex Northern Gaza and block all humanitarian aid from entering: https://t.co/347l49FmtN

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) January 13, 2025

As for the hostages, there are still nearly 100 unaccounted for, but at least 30 have been confirmed deceased by Israeli officials, and the fates of many more remain uncertain.

“Israel believes that most of the 33 hostages to be released in the first phase of the deal are alive, a senior Israeli official told reporters on Monday, but the bodies of dead captives will also likely be among those released,” CNN reports. “The first phase would take place over an initial 42-day ceasefire.”