Netanyahu didn’t flip-flop on ceasefire, saw text only on plane — source

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn’t flip-flop on his response to a joint US-French call or a 21-day ceasefire along the Israeli-Lebanese border, a senior diplomatic source told Israeli reporters during a briefing in New York.

“We never agreed to it,” the source said.

He was one of two senior sources who briefed reporters about what appeared to be a deep division between the Biden administration and Israel over the best path forward to push Hezbollah away from Israel’s northern border and out of Southern Lebanon.

US believed Netanyahu would consent to the ceasefire

The US claimed that it believed Netanyahu would consent to the ceasefire soon after it was issued, while Israel said there was no such expectation.

The disagreement created a situation where US officials were talking about a 21-day ceasefire that would soon go into effect. At the same time, Netanyahu spoke about the IDF’s continued military campaign against Hezbollah, and security officials weighed a possible ground campaign in southern Lebanon.

US National Security Communications Adviser John Kirby said that US President Joe Biden would not have issued the statement if he didn’t believe that Israel was on board.

Israel “doesn’t want a dispute with the US over this,” one of the officials stated, noting that it was simply not possible to have understood that Israel would support a final text it saw only at the last second. The US also doesn't want a dispute here, the source added.

There were only three people involved in the talks that led up to the issuance of the statement on Wednesday: Netanyahu Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Israel’s Ambassador to Mike Herzog.

Those three people “didn’t see 95 percent of the text until Netanyahu was on the plane” en route to New York, and they were “the most involved in the process,” the source said.

US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan called Dermer to explain that the Biden administration was thinking of releasing a joint statement with France calling for a ceasefire in the north. 

Israel believed it gave its consent to the start of a dialogue on the proposal, during which time it would continue with its military campaign. 

Israel always believed its consent was contingent on the text, a source said. It was important to Israel that it proceed with the process without giving the impression that it opposed it.

“Our [Israel’s] understanding was that it was an American decision, that they [the Biden administration] was going to put something on the table, and we would have to see what it said,” the source said.

Netanyahu won’t respond to the call for a 21-day ceasefire call without holding consultations back in Israel, one of the sources explained.

A northern ceasefire that would create a temporary lull in the year-long constrained IDF-Hezbollah war would also be linked to the concurrent Gaza war.

Israel has preferred to de-couple the two issues, while Hezbollah has insisted on linking them, the source said.

The initial text that Israel saw didn’t include Gaza in it, while the one that was issued did, as part of a bid to gain wider consensus on the document, the source said, referencing the 10 other countries that backed the document.

Israel has since worked to repair that understanding with the US, with conversations held with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and US special envoys Brett McGurk and Amos Hochstein.

“We have tried to fix this misunderstanding, and we think it is now behind us,” he said.