Tel Aviv witnesses massive daily demonstrations urging Netanyahu and his government to conclude a deal to exchange detainees with Hamas (Anatolia)

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he is personally managing the negotiations to recover all the “hostages,” not some of them. This comes in light of the cancellation of a war cabinet session that was planned to address the prisoner exchange deal.

This came in a statement issued by Netanyahu's office after the latter met with the families of detained soldiers in Gaza without specifying the place of the meeting. This is his first meeting with them since Israel launched its war on the besieged Strip.

Netanyahu said - according to the statement - “Since we have returned 123 detainees so far (during the temporary truce), I am forced to return all the rest,” and added, “I will not leave any of them behind. I am working for this day and night.”

He also said, according to the statement, that the cards must be used wisely in negotiations, noting that they have “strategic assets” of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), considering this matter “another key to recovering the hostages.”

Netanyahu claimed that "the continued strong military pressure that we have exerted and will exert is what brought back the detainees, and will bring back everyone."

He also said that they took control of the northern Gaza Strip and Khan Yunis (south) and were preparing to enter Rafah (south), despite international and international opposition to the consequences of any military operation in Rafah, which is crowded with displaced people.

It is noteworthy that Israeli media quoted the families of the detained soldiers before their meeting with Netanyahu as saying that the security services and the state intimidated them and that no minister communicated with them. They said, “We have remained silent since the beginning of the war at the request of the security services.”

The families of captured Israeli soldiers demonstrated in Gaza, for the first time since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip, due to the ban imposed on them by security and military measures, while Tel Aviv and other cities are witnessing massive daily demonstrations demanding that the Israeli government expedite the conclusion of a prisoner exchange deal with Hamas.

The families of the Israeli prisoners are constantly demanding a deal to release them (Anatolia)

Disagreements within the war council

In a related development, Israeli Channel 13 said that the war cabinet session, which was planned to address the prisoner exchange deal, was canceled following the political crisis surrounding the conscription law.

For its part, Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper reported that Netanyahu transferred the discussion of the deal to the expanded government, where there is a greater number of opponents to it.

Disagreements between Netanyahu and members of the War Council are increasing, as the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation revealed a difficult confrontation between Netanyahu and the two ministers, members of the War Council, Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot, regarding the prisoner deal.

The authority quoted the two ministers as saying that they could have been in the middle of the deal if they had initiated it, but no breakthrough occurred because they did not initiate it.

Indirect negotiations are continuing in Doha between Israel and Hamas, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the United States, with the aim of reaching a prisoner exchange deal and a second truce between the two parties.

Neither Israel nor Hamas specified the number of captured Israeli soldiers in Gaza, while Israel holds more than 9,000 Palestinians in its prisons, and estimates that there are about 134 Israeli prisoners in Gaza, while Hamas announced that 70 of them were killed in random Israeli raids during the ongoing aggression on the Gaza Strip.

Source: Al Jazeera + Anatolia