Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked members of the negotiating team responsible for ceasefire and hostage release talks, accusing them of conducting “false briefings” and “seeding desperations among the families of the hostages,” during a war cabinet meeting on Sunday, according to Israeli media.
“The false briefings from the negotiation team only harm the effort to return the abductees,” said Netanyahu, according to N12. “If there is someone on the negotiating team who is not ready to accept the decisions of the political echelon just to get anonymous and false headlines in the media for political purposes – let him be decent and not be here.”
The war cabinet met on Sunday evening for the first time in 12 days to discuss the issue of the hostages.
Negotiating team says they feel opportunities for a deal were missed
Earlier this month, members of the negotiating team told N12’s Uvda investigative show that they feel that opportunities for a deal were repeatedly missed and that they feel that they were ignored by the prime minister’s office.
“I can’t say that without Netanyahu there would have been a deal, I can say that the likelihood of a deal would have been higher,” said one member of the negotiating team to Uvda. “What’s more, from December, certainly from January, it’s clear to everyone that we don’t negotiate. It happens over and over again: we get a mandate during the day, and then the prime minister makes phone calls at night, instructing ‘don’t say that’, ‘don’t approve of that’, bypassing both the team leaders and the war cabinet in this way.”
Netanyahu also accused Defense Minister Yoav Gallant of leaking information from sensitive meetings during a recent security cabinet meeting, KAN news reported on Sunday.
Several ministers and leaders of the defense establishment were present at the meeting.
“Every time I sit in small meetings with the defense minister, the head of the Mossad, and the head of the Shin Bet – everything is leaked. I know that it’s not the head of the Mossad and not the head of the Shin Bet, so who could it be?” Netanyahu asked during the meeting, according to KAN.
Gallant was not physically present at the meeting and had called in.
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