Gaza hostage talks stalled by Knesset recess, not IDF troop placement - analysis

This is especially true when talking about the big picture: Whether Netanyahu could have cut a hostage deal in a certain month as opposed to several months later.

But for much smaller calculations: Regarding the timing of a hostage deal, a few days or weeks this way or that way, politics is often overwhelmingly mixed in with the specific date when Netanyahu chooses to finalize an agreement.

It is true that part of why Netanyahu did not end the war and sign a full hostage deal in spring 2024 was to keep his government afloat when Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened to topple him.

But Netanyahu also was not satisfied ideologically that Hamas was sufficiently beaten at that point in the war (its Rafah battalions were fully intact) to end the military pressure and leave Hamas the way it was.

In contrast, by the time Netanyahu flew off for Washington last week, he was mostly ready for another ceasefire deal with Hamas, for at least 60 days, and possibly for ending the war entirely.

That means that a large part of the reason there has been a delay in finalizing a deal at this point, though probably not a long delay, likely has to do with the Knesset recess.

In fact, pretty much all of the issues that Netanyahu and Hamas disagreed about during the last ceasefire of January to March had been resolved by the middle of last week.

Back in the January-March period, Netanyahu was willing to extend the ceasefire beyond early March for the return of more hostages as long as he did not need to explicitly say this would end the war.

Hamas was not willing to give over any more hostages without a much clearer end to the war being part of any new deal.

So Hamas is now pretty much accepting Netanyahu’s terms from January-March, but suddenly, mid-week last week, a new issue cropped up.

Netanyahu wants to hold on to the Morag Corridor, which now cuts off Khan Yunis (mid-southern Gaza) from Rafah (deep southern Gaza), effectively making Rafah a more Hamas-free area for Palestinian civilians.

Now, there are plenty of good, serious military reasons to want to hold onto the Morag Corridor.

The largest one is the displacement of Hamas's political rule from the several hundred thousand Palestinians in Rafah, something that could deeply undermine its ability to reconstitute itself militarily.

But the IDF has long dispensed with those Hamas forces (the second time the IDF has beaten Hamas in Rafah after beating a larger group of them in summer 2024).

In the past, Defense Minister Israel Katz has said that the purpose of Morag is to “increase the pressure [on Hamas] to release the hostages, and to build a bridge for the continuation of operations for defeating Hamas.”

IDF sources have said that Hamas’s weapons manufacturing capabilities have been hit hard by IDF actions, but that it still retains a variety of makeshift facilities.

In that light, having more forces in the Morag Corridor makes it easier to act speedily against such facilities when they are discovered and before Hamas manufacturers can escape.

But all of these are somewhat beside the point.

Israel and Netanyahu cannot say that Morag is a make-or-break issue because they only built it in April.

It was not make or break for 18 months of the war before that.

And Netanyahu could have placed the issue of the Morag Corridor on the table before going to Washington to try to resolve it.

Moreover, despite past statements, Katz explicitly let slip to the Post and other journalists days before Netanyahu flew to Washington that the Morag Corridor was not a make-or-break issue.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir and most of the IDF high command do not view Morag as a reason to hold up another hostage deal.

And this is Zamir, the popular IDF chief who is viewed as aggressive, not Herzi Halevi, the IDF chief of October 7 who some viewed (justifiably or not) as more passive.

Rather, it seems that Netanyahu purposely waited to pull out the Morag Corridor issue to temporarily muddy talks just a bit longer until it is closer to the Knesset recess date of July 27.

Netanyahu is worried that Smotrich could try to topple the government. But once the recess is about to start, and certainly once the recess starts, that threat will be postponed until the Knesset returns in late October.

And once it is late October, after a 60-day ceasefire, Netanyahu can either decide to go back to war or to initiate elections on his own, which would be set for some time in 2026, which will mean he will have survived most of his term.

It is also possible that Netanyahu still is trying to use Morag to avoid a deal to further uproot Hamas’s political control over the Palestinian civilian population – and to keep his government stable for deeper into 2026.

But most of the signals from Netanyahu – as well as the leak from Katz and the clear position of Zamir – point to a relatively imminent deal.

If this is how it plays out, it would be virtually identical to the delay of the last ceasefire with Hamas by a few weeks. That ceasefire could have started in early January, but instead started only on January 19 – since Netanyahu wanted the deal signed as close to Trump’s inauguration day as possible.