Netanyahu’s advisor draws attention to the agreement’s fragility: I’m crossing my fingers
Regarding the tenuous nature of the hostage agreement with Hamas, a senior advisor to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed optimism that it will proceed.
According to key agreement negotiator Qatar, a truce between Israel and Hamas is set to start on Friday at 7 a.m. local time (midnight ET), with Hamas releasing 13 civilian hostages a few hours later. There will be more; over the course of four days, 50 hostages are anticipated to be released, along with waves of Palestinian inmates.
Like US President Joe Biden, I believe Israelis are crossing their fingers that this will really occur and that tomorrow will see the homecoming of 13 Israelis. That’s what we’re hoping for. Still, we must wait and see. Who we’re dealing with is known to us. Mark Regev, Netanyahu’s senior advisor, described Hamas as a vicious, merciless terrorist group and said that we must always be prepared for the unexpected.
The release of the hostages was originally scheduled for Thursday, but it was postponed until Friday. Regev said he was unable to provide specifics on the reason behind the one-day delay in the plan.
I hope it happens tomorrow; that’s all I have to say. Regev stated, “Like President Biden, I’m crossing my fingers.”
Regev responded, “That’s the understanding reached,” when asked how certain he was that this would be the start of at least 50 Israeli hostages being sent home. And that is our desired outcome. It’s bittersweet, though, because even if we are able to bring 50 of them home, there are still 190 being kept captive in Hamas, and we naturally want to bring them all home.
I don’t have a lot of confidence, he said in response to a question about his level of faith that the transaction would finally work.
However, Hamas has been under military pressure as a result of our attacks on their apparatus, our removal of their top military commanders, and our other actions. He added that they wanted this break and that such a truce was a calculated risk.
