Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to prevent the implementation of the hostage deal’s second phase, a senior Israeli security official familiar with the negotiations told the Ynet news site on Sunday.

“Every time you think it’s impossible to stoop any lower… it turns out that it is possible, and that there is still much lower still these people are willing to stoop to achieve political goals at the expense of hostages’ lives,” the anonymous official told the news site, fuming over a statement issued by Netanyahu’s spokesperson last week in which the latter insisted that Israel is not currently holding negotiations regarding the second phase of the hostage deal.

The senior Israeli security official maintained that this amounts to a violation of the hostage deal, which stipulates that the parties begin holding negotiations regarding phase two of the deal no later than the 16th day of the first phase, which was on February 3 — nearly two weeks ago.

The three-stage ceasefire agreement, reached last month, halted some 15 months of fighting triggered by the group’s October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, when Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took 251 hostages.

Implementation of the entire plan requires Hamas to release all its hostages, Israel to release thousands of Palestinian security prisoners — including hundreds serving life sentences — and a halt to fighting in the Strip, followed by negotiations for a “sustainable calm” and IDF withdrawal from the enclave.

Only 33 hostages are scheduled to be released, in batches, over the six weeks of the first stage.

Netanyahu is under pressure from the far-right flank of his coalition to resume the fight against Hamas until the terror group is destroyed. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has threatened to take his Religious Zionism party out of the government if it isn’t, which would remove Netanyahu’s parliamentary majority.

The official claimed that even if Israel changed its approach and immediately engaged intensely in negotiations regarding the second phase of the deal, there is not enough time left to finish those talks by the end of the first phase on March 2.

The terms of the agreement do, however, allow for the first phase to continue indefinitely so long as the sides remain at the negotiation table in good faith.

“Netanyahu is careful to immediately deny that such negotiations are even taking........

© The Times of Israel