Trump’s hostage deal ultimatum was also aimed at Israel – report

The incoming president reportedly messaged Netanyahu that he “has been a great friend of Israel, and now it’s time to be a friend back.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

When incoming president Donald Trump warned that there would be “hell to pay” if a hostage deal was not signed before he came into office, the message was seemingly directed just as much at Israel as at Hamas, according to a Wall Street Journal report Saturday.

Special Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff reportedly told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last Saturday, when he met with him, that Trump had said in no uncertain terms, “Make the deal.”

“The president has been a great friend of Israel, and now it’s time to be a friend back,” Witkoff said to Netanyahu, according to the paper’s source.

He also told the prime minister that the Israeli negotiators in Qatar needed the power to make decisions on their own, and “if Netanyahu didn’t want to work that way, everyone should just pack their bags and go home.”

Just days later, the negotiating team, headed by Mossad chief David Barnea, returned with an agreement that was then authorized by the Cabinet on Friday night.

The U.S. has many more sticks it can use against Israel than it does against Hamas, especially as Trump has made it clear that he would not involve the U.S. military in any conflict right now.

This can include the threats of withholding weapons, as the Biden administration did in part, and declining to back Israel in international bodies such as the UN and International Criminal Court.

There is always the possibility that support for a decisive Israeli strike on Iran, the master puppeteer and funder of all the terrorist organizations acting against the Jewish state, could be put on the line as well.

While according to surveys, a majority of Israelis support the deal, a solid minority do not, including families of soldiers killed in the war and some families of the hostages themselves who protested in Jerusalem Saturday night, insisting that the long-term security of the state is in danger if the government carries through with the terms.

In the first phase of the ceasefire, set to last six weeks, 33 hostages – not all of them alive – are to be freed by Hamas in dribs and drabs of three each week, including women, children, men over age 50, and those injured or ill.

Fourteen hostages are going to be released only in the very last week, including Avraham Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed, two mentally incapacitated Israelis who have been held in Gaza since 2014 and 2015, respectively, after they wandered into the Strip on their own.

For its part, Israel will release up to 737 Palestinian security prisoners, including 290 who are serving multiple life sentences, and 1,167 Gazans who had been captured in the 15-month long war but were not part of the Hamas-led invasion force that massacred 1,200 people and abducted over 250 last October, 97 of whom are still in captivity, with perhaps half of them still alive.

Since the “price” for each live hostage returned is higher than the one for those who are dead, the number of prisoners may go down.

Hamas has only committed to telling Israel 24 hours ahead of time which three hostages it was releasing in any of the five first weeks.

For each live civilian female or child abductee, 30 security prisoners who are female or under age 19 will be released. Female IDF soldiers will exact a higher price, 50 security prisoners for each one.

Every live abductee over age 50 returned will garner 30 terrorists who are sick or over the same age. For the nine sick or injured hostages who are not soldiers, 110 security prisoners will be released.

The IDF will also withdraw from all population centers to kilometer-wide border zones within the Strip and allow the mass return of Gazans to their homes from the humanitarian safe areas in the southern part of the coastal enclave.

Negotiations for the release of the rest of the hostages in phase two will begin in the middle of phase one.

Netanyahu said the Cabinet’s authorization was given for a “temporary” lull in the effort to destroy Hamas, adding that Trump had agreed that if Israel’s security demands aren’t met in the second phase, the IDF can “return to the war.”

However, in an interview with NBC, Trump said that the ceasefire “better hold.”