Unsurprisingly, Blinken did get what he wanted from Gantz, who said in a statement that it was “imperative” the deal approved by Biden be implemented. Gallant, though, was much more cagey, thanking Blinken for his efforts, while emphasizing “Israel’s commitment to dismantling Hamas as a governing and military authority” in Gaza.
This is because Gallant’s main policy gripe with Netanyahu isn’t over a hostage deal, it’s over the absence of a post-war Israeli governance plan for Gaza — something Biden’s also pleaded with Israel to come up with for months. But Gallant isn’t going to crash Netanyahu’s unruly coalition over the hostage deal — the ruling Likud party would never forgive him if he did.
As such, all Blinken can show for his efforts is backing for the hostage deal from the ultra-Orthodox politicians of the Shas and United Torah Judaism parties. And though both are members of Netanyahu’s governing coalition, it remains unlikely they would be willing to crash his government either — according to a poll by the Israel Democracy Institute, a majority of their traditional voters favor prioritizing the military operation in Gaza over getting the hostages back.
The Biden administration can at least draw some comfort from the same poll, which suggests a majority of Jewish Israelis see a hostage deal as the higher national priority. But the bad news is that this isn’t the case with right-wing voters who support the coalition overall — and coalition parties are likely to heed their voters rather than protesters and hostage families.
With their eyes fixed on the U.S. election, Biden and his aides arguably jumped too quickly to push a deal that wasn’t oven-ready and hadn’t yet been endorsed by all members of the Israeli government. Ultranationalist ministers Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir now believe any lasting truce now will end up with Hamas resurrecting itself in Gaza; and Netanyahu can hardly pull the plug on the war when Hamas can still fire rockets at Israel and is mounting small-group insurgency in northern Gaza — which was meant to be cleared by the IDF.
So, as with previous deals that have been mooted over the past few months, this one, too, is likely to fall by the wayside in the face of Israel’s refusal to agree to a permanent end to hostilities before it has secured its main war aims. The other side of the coin, of course, is that the Palestinian militant group remains adamant it won’t agree to just a temporary cease-fire either.
