2/6/2025
Israeli media dealt with recent developments in the prisoners ’exchange negotiations with the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), highlighting the political complications and serious internal challenges facing the completion of the deal.
Channel 12 in the United States, Jonah LeBron, said that she knows the American envoy Steve Witkev and knows the extent of the American administration’s intervention in the negotiations, and expected Washington to exert strong pressure, explaining that she heard this from US officials convinced that pressure could succeed.
However, the correspondence expressed her warning, saying: But as you know, we were at this stage in the past, in reference to the frequent stumbling of the previous negotiations.
In the context, the head of the Arab Affairs Department at Channel 12, Ravi Kais, said that Hamas is trying to show that it had made a positive response, “but when we look at the observations I made, these observations fluctuate their response to a negative response.”
Kais explained that “these foggy responses” reveal a number of Hamas’s notes that reject a proposal and Witkouf, noting that the movement is calling for changing the mechanisms of distributing humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip, as it does not want the current mechanism, but rather wants to return to the previous mechanism of the United Nations and international organizations.
He also pointed out that Hamas is calling for free crosses for the two directions in the Rafah crossing, which raises questions about what Israel and the United States will do with Hamas’s response very far from being positive.
For its part, the political affairs analyst, Dana Weiss, presented an explanation for the Hamas strategy, describing the response as “smart”. She noted that Hamas does not want to leave the negotiating table, but it also does not want to agree to the conditions.
Weiss explained that Hamas wants to use the prisoner paper, and wants to divide their release on the first day, thirtieth and sixty day of the deal, which is the end of the ceasefire.
According to its analysis, Hamas wants to do two things: first to keep in its hands the largest number of papers, and secondly, Israel would forced into objective and serious negotiations.
She added that the movement does not trust that if it released 10 prisoners at the beginning, Israel will be concerned with a ceasefire, and also does not trust that US President Donald Trump will be keen to be serious negotiations.
Smoothic contradictions
On the internal political level, former television journalist Anna Perry pointed to the governmental complications, saying: As usual, the Minister of Finance in Salail Smotic this week entered the line, and the journalist said, “Even if the deal was partial, and we always knew that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu -who issued a arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court -does not want to end the war so that Smotrich remains with him.”
Perry revealed a contradiction in Smotrich’s position, explaining that he said in the January deal: If we are no longer to fight, I will drop the government, but what does he say now? He said this week that if a partial deal is reached, the government will also fall.
The television journalist commented on this contradiction, saying: That is, the deal that ends the war is not good, and the partial deal is also not good, and he expressed his hope to conclude the deal now, even partially, this is the proposed, pointing out that he is unable to understand the reason for not ending the war.
On the side of the prisoner file, the Israeli media reported impressive appeals from the prisoners’ families, where the mother of one of the prisoners said: I was shocked this week when I learned that my son miraculously survived several times of the bombing, and on one occasion he was almost suffocated to death with toxic gases in a tunnel that was bombed and collapsed.
The mother went to the prime minister, saying: From here I address the prime minister, you are sentenced to death to the kidnappers who will be abandoned.
In the same context, another prisoner’s father warned that his son may be abandoned in the partial deal, and he may pay the price of Netanyahu’s insistence not to end the war.
