‘Biden’s Gaza plan needs much work but Israel accepts it’

JERUSALEM — An aide to Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
confirmed on Sunday that Israel
had accepted a framework deal for
winding down the Gaza war now
being advanced by US President
Joe Biden, though he described
it as flawed and in need of much
more work.
In an interview with Britain’s
Sunday Times, Ophir Falk, chief
foreign policy advisor to Netanyahu,
said Biden’s proposal was
“a deal we agreed to — it’s not a
good deal but we dearly want the
hostages released, all of them.”
“There are a lot of details to be
worked out,” he said, adding that
Israeli conditions, including “the
release of the hostages and the
destruction of Hamas as a genocidal
terrorist organization” have
not changed.
Biden, whose initial lockstep
support for Israel’s offensive has
given way to open censure of the
operation’s high civilian death toll,
on Friday aired what he described
as a three-phase plan submitted
by the Netanyahu government to
end the war.
The first phase entails a truce
and the return of some hostages
held by Hamas, after which the
sides would negotiate on an
open-ended cessation of hostilities
for a second phase in which
remaining live captives would go
free, Biden said.
That sequencing appears to
imply that Hamas would continue
to play a role in incremental arrangements
mediated by Egypt
and Qatar – a potential clash with
Israel’s determination to resume
the campaign to eliminate the
Iranian-backed Islamist group.
Biden has hailed several ceasefire
proposals over the past several
months, each with similar
frameworks to the one he outlined
on Friday, all of which collapsed. In
February he said Israel had agreed to
halt fighting by Ramadan, the Muslim
holy month that began on March
10.

No such truce materialized.
The primary sticking point
has been Israel’s insistence that
it would discuss only temporary
pauses to fighting until Hamas is
destroyed. Hamas, which shows no
sign of stepping aside, says it will
free hostages only under a path to
a permanent end to the war.
In his speech, Biden said his
latest proposal “creates a better
‘day after’ in Gaza without
Hamas in power.” He did not
elaborate on how this would be
achieved, and acknowledged that
“there are a number of