Biden speaks with Netanyahu as cease-fire deal hangs in the balance

President Biden spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday about efforts to secure a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas and broader efforts to lower tensions in the region. 

Vice President Harris also joined the call, the White House said. 

“The President and the Prime Minister discussed active and ongoing U.S. efforts to support Israel’s defense against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive U.S. military deployments,” the White House said in a readout of the call.

“The President stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles.”

The call comes as Netanyahu has reportedly frustrated efforts by the Biden administration to conclude a cease-fire deal, with the Israeli leader backtracking on promises to draw down Israel’s military presence along the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. 

Axios reported that Biden was expected to press Netanyahu on being more flexible on security arrangements along the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip of land running about 9 miles north to south between Egypt and Gaza and a main area of Hamas’s underground smuggling operations to bring weapons and supplies into Gaza. 

Netanyahu had reportedly told a group of families of hostages that Israeli forces would not leave the Philadelphi corridor or the Netzarim corridor, an east-west corridor dividing the north of Gaza from the south. 

Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Netanyahu for three hours Monday and emerged saying Netanyahu had agreed to a U.S.-led proposal to close gaps between Israel and Hamas on the deal. Blinken put the onus on Hamas to accept the proposal. 

“The agreement is very clear on the schedule and the locations of [Israeli military] withdrawals from Gaza, and Israel has agreed to that,” Blinken said Tuesday night in remarks from Qatar. 

“I can just speak to what I heard from [Netanyahu] directly yesterday when we spent three hours together, including, again, Israel’s endorsement of the bridging proposal and thus the — the detailed plan. And that plan, among other things, as I said, includes a very clear schedule and locations for withdrawals.”

Israel has destroyed 150 tunnels in the area of the Philadelphi corridor and Rafah, the southern Gazan city that has a crossing with Egypt, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Wednesday when visiting the area. He said that the Israel Defense Forces had destroyed Hamas’s Rafah brigade.

Israel’s military has signaled openness to withdrawing its ground forces, while maintaining security surveillance and freedom to conduct military operations if necessary. 

Israeli forces would withdraw from populated areas of the Gaza Strip as part of a first phase of the cease-fire deal laid out by Biden at the end of May and endorsed by the United Nations Security Council. 

The first phase of the deal would begin with a six-week truce to allow for Hamas to release hostages it kidnapped from Israel during its terrorist attack on Oct. 7, and for a scale-up of humanitarian aid deliveries to Palestinian civilians in Gaza. Israel is also expected to release Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails as part of the exchange for the hostages. 

The administration is pushing for the cease-fire as the best way to lower the temperature in the volatile Middle East, with Iran threatening a retaliation against Israel for its alleged role in the July 31 assassination of a top Hamas political leader in a guesthouse in Tehran. 

The administration is pushing to conclude final talks of the cease-fire by the end of the week.

“Time is of the essence,” Blinken said in Doha. 

“This needs to get done and it needs to get done in the days ahead, and we will do everything possible to get it across the finish line.”

Updated: 5:57 p.m.