Rejecting claims from Hamas and Israeli protesters that his government is not engaged in serious negotiations aimed at securing the release of those held captive in Gaza, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday he was committed to reaching an agreement to free the hostages and military pressure had been effective.
“We are willing,” Israel’s prime minister told a cabinet meeting. “We are negotiating under fire” and “can see cracks beginning to appear” in what Hamas has demanded in its negotiations, he said.
“Military pressure is working,” he added. “It works because it acts simultaneously. On the one hand, it crushes Hamas’s military and governmental capabilities, and on the other hand, it creates the conditions for the release of our hostages.”
Netanyahu said on Saturday night “the security cabinet convened and decided to increase the pressure, which had already increased, in order to further pound Hamas and create the optimal conditions for releasing our hostages”.
Tens of thousands of people who rallied in Tel Aviv and throughout Israel on Saturday night accused the prime minister of deprioritising a deal to free those still held captive in Gaza.
Speaking to protesters at Habima Square in central Tel Aviv, Einav Zangauker, the mother of Matan Zangauker, who is still held captive by Hamas, accused Netanyahu of carrying out a “targeted assassination” against her son after the Israel Defense Forces launched an aerial attack on Gaza last week.
“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has decided to bomb Matan instead of saving him and bringing him home,” she said.
Of the 251 hostages taken during Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel, 58 remain in Gaza, including 34 who, the Israeli military says, are dead.
Under pressure at international and domestic level, Netanyahu stressed that “Hamas must lay down its arms”, adding that its leaders would be allowed to leave after they did so, and Israel was also willing to talk about “the final stage” of a hostage release-ceasefire deal with the militant group.
“We are ready,” he said. “Hamas will lay down its weapons. Its leaders will be allowed to leave. We will ensure general security in the Gaza Strip and enable the implementation of the Trump plan, the voluntary immigration plan.”
Days after taking office, the US president, Donald Trump, announced a plan that would relocate Gaza’s more than 2 million inhabitants to neighbouring Egypt and Jordan, an announcement that was condemned by much of the international community, including allies across Europe and the Middle East.
Netanyahu’s remarks came as mediators from Egypt, Qatar and the US continued efforts to broker a ceasefire and secure the release of the Israeli hostages.
On Saturday, Hamas allegedly offered to free five living Israeli hostages in exchange for a 50-day ceasefire, and released a video of a hostage making an appeal for his freedom.
Hamas’s chief, Khalil al-Hayya, said on Saturday that the militant group expressed willingness to release the five hostages over the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr, which begins on Sunday, after a proposal it received two days ago from Egypt and Qatar, Reuters has reported.
“Two days ago, we received a proposal from the mediators in Egypt and Qatar. We dealt with it positively and accepted it,” Hayya, who leads the Hamas negotiating team, said in a televised speech. “We hope that the [Israeli] occupation will not undermine [it].”
Hamas stated on Saturday that the group had approved a new ceasefire proposal put forward by mediators, and urged Israel to support it. Netanyahu’s office confirmed receipt of the proposal and said Israel had submitted a counterproposal.
The details of the latest mediation efforts remain undisclosed, although, according to media reports in Israel, Netanyahu’s government insists on the release of 10 of the 24 hostages.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s office said he would visit Hungary on 2 April for a multi-day trip in defiance of an arrest warrant from the international criminal court against him for alleged war crimes in Gaza.
The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orbán, publicly extended an invitation to Netanyahu in November shortly after the ICC issued the warrant.
In a separate development on Sunday, the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said the bodies of 14 rescuers, including a UN employee, had been found in Rafah in southern Gaza, a week after its ambulances came under heavy fire from Israeli forces.
Three PRCS first responders and one civil defence paramedic are still missing.
“The bodies were recovered with difficulty as they were buried in the sand, with some showing signs of decomposition,” the Red Crescent said.
Israel’s military admitted on Saturday that it had fired on ambulances in the Gaza Strip after identifying them as “suspicious vehicles”.
The incident occurred in Rafah city’s Tel al-Sultan neighbourhood just days into a renewed Israeli offensive in the area close to the Egyptian border. The military resumed its wider bombardments of Gaza on 18 March, breaking a ceasefire that had lasted almost two months.
The PRCS president, Younis al-Khatib, condemned Israel for targeting its paramedics as they were fulfilling their humanitarian mission.
He said a rescue team had been able to reach the scene where the crew members went missing two days ago and had retrieved the body of a crew member, which had been buried.
“There are a number of scenarios for what happened … After more than one week of losing communication with our crew either they have been killed or detained by the Israeli occupation forces,” he said.
