Netanyahu calls Hamas terrorists ‘dead men walking’ before report says Israel-Hamas closing in US-brokered deal

By: Patrick R.

Israel and Hamas were reportedly closing in on a US-brokered deal Saturday night to pause fighting in exchange for freeing dozens of women and children the terror group is holding hostage – even as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed that Hamas members were “dead men walking.”

The sides “agreed to a tentative deal,” which would bring the first halt to hostilities since Hamas’ shocking Oct. 7 attack on Israelis, sources told the Washington Post.

However, in a tweet responding to the report, White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson wrote that an agreement has not been reached “but we continue to work hard to get to a deal.”

Netanyahu told reporters earlier Saturday that “there was no deal on the table” regarding the hostages “as of now,” and dismissed “incorrect reports” about the situation, The Times of Israel reported.

Under the terms of the six-page accord reported by the Washington Post, military operations on both sides would be suspended for at least five days under close aerial surveillance, and 50 or more hostages would be released in groups every 24 hours during the pause.

A  significant amount of humanitarian aid would enter Gaza from Egypt, supplying the besieged enclave with fuel, food and water.

Netanyahu’s promise

The reported tentative agreement came hours after Netanyahu declared all members of Hamas “dead men walking” as an estimated 30,000 Israelis concluded a five-day march to Jerusalem demanding the government bring home loved ones they haven’t seen in 43 days.

Netanyahu spoke at a news conference Saturday night in Tel Aviv, after the demonstrators came to a defiant halt outside his office an hour away in the ancient holy city.

In other developments on Saturday:

• Netanyahu appeared to shame those calling for new elections, claiming he was “stunned” by the political talk “when our soldiers are fighting in Gaza, falling in battle; the families of the hostages are in a giant nightmare.

“There’ll be time for politics,” he said, according to The Times of Israel.

• President Biden’s main adviser on the Middle East, Brett McGurk, said at a security conference in Bahrain that only the release of the hostages would bring “a significant pause” in the war and a “massive surge of humanitarian relief.”

•  A Hamas spokesman claimed the group no longer knows the current status of all the Israeli hostages because it lost contact with those holding them captive.

• Reports emerged that lookouts posted along the Gaza border before the Oct. 7 massacre saw unusual activity weeks ahead of the attack, but were allegedly threatened by their commanders and told to keep quiet. One senior commander reportedly  told them, “If you all bother us again with these things, you’ll be court-martialed.”

• The Israel Defense Forces said it is investigating reports of 50 deaths at the UN-run Al-Fakhoura school in the Jabalia refugee camp, the BBC reported. “I can’t confirm this incident is IDF, but we are seeing the images like you on social media. We are looking into it,” spokesman Lt. Col. Peter Lerner told the outlet. Hamas claimed Israeli forces had fired on the facility housing displaced families.

•  Israel’s ground invasion is in a “second stage” and will soon move to southern Gaza, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said.

•  Biden, writing in a Washington Post op-ed, called for the world to oversee security in Gaza after the war. “The international community must commit resources to support the people of Gaza in the immediate aftermath of this crisis, including interim security measures,” he wrote.

• The death toll from IDF strikes on Khan Yunis in southern Gaza early Saturday rose from 32 to 64, Haaretz reported, citing medical sources in the Gaza Strip.

Initial reports said that 26 people were killed when the strikes hit a residential block, and an additional six perished moments later when a house was bombed in Deir Al-Balah. The area’s streets were lined with shrouded bodies throughout the day, photos obtained by NBC News showed.

•  A poll released by N12 showed an uptick in national support for Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip after the current conflict’s resolution. In 2005 about 8,000 Jews left their homes in 21 settlements in Gaza. Now 32% of those surveyed said “Israel should remain permanently and renew Jewish settlement.”

‘We will walk to Gaza’

In the five-day march to Jerusalem, the swelling crowd was buoyed by the loved ones of the hostages, most of whom carried signs bearing photos of their missing relatives.

“The journey is not over,” organizer Yuval Haran, whose family members were abducted during the Oct. 7 attack, told Haaretz. “Forty-three days is too long. We will continue in every possible way until each one of them is home.”

“I returned tonight from the USA,” the father of Itay Chen, 19, a soldier who is believed to have been kidnapped by Hamas, told N12.

 “We had a meeting with Jake Sullivan. I don’t understand how it can be that the national security adviser in the US has time to meet with us – but the defense minister in Israel does not.”

The demonstrators called on the war Cabinet to meet with the families.

“We’ve been walking for five days without stopping and my legs hurt and my shoulders and everything hurts, but nothing hurts like my heart does,” the mother of hostage Eden Zacharia told The Times of Israel.

“Even if we need to walk to Gaza, we will walk to Gaza. Wherever we need to go, we will go; we won’t give up on our children,” she added.

At one point, Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid was spotted joining the protest. Lapid has been critical of Netanyahu’s approach to the conflict and even called on him last week to step down “immediately.”

While officials continued to probe the condition of the Al-Fakhoura school, chaos reigned in Gaza City as hundreds of patients and sheltering families fled Al Shifa Hospital in a mass evacuation. Six doctors stayed behind to care for the 120 patients too medically vulnerable to move.

“Most of the medical staff had left Al Shifa hospital… Many patients can not leave the hospital as they are in the ICU beds or the baby incubators,” head of plastic surgery Ahmed El Mokhallalati posted Saturday on X. “I along with 5 other doctors will stay.”

Lt. Col. Lerner told the BBC the IDF has “been encouraging people to leave for several weeks” and had been coordinating departures Saturday morning.

“It is a huge challenge for any professional military operating in such a hostile environment where terrorists use tunnels to come out and launch rocket-propelled grenades – and they do it from places like hospitals, schools, mosques.”