By Michael Hernandez
WASHINGTON (AA) - The White House maintained Thursday that nearly all of a Gaza Strip cease-fire for prisoner-swap deal is complete, hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denied that is the case.
Netanyahu took to US airwaves earlier to address claims made by a senior US administration official who said a day prior that "90%f this deal has been agreed, and it's based on terms that even Hamas had in their own proposal." The Israeli premier said that assessment is "exactly inaccurate."
"There’s not a deal in the making," he said during an interview on Fox and Friends, Fox News' morning talk show. "Unfortunately, it’s not close."
National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby declined to get into what he called "a back and forth with" Netanyahu in public, but maintained that his colleague accurately described the state of ongoing negotiations.
"So first of all, 90%, verge of a deal. You call that optimistic, I call that accurate. That's how close we believe we are. That's where we have gotten to. The basic framework of the deal has been agreed to," Kirby said in response to a reporter's question.
"What we're talking about now is the implementing details, and specifically the exchange of prisoners, and now that calculus is different because of what happened over the weekend," added Kirby, referring to the discovery of the bodies of six hostages who were killed while in Hamas captivity.
Briefing reporters Wednesday, the Biden administration official said the deal, which has been under negotiation for several months, consists of 18 paragraphs, 14 of which are “finished,” though critical issues related to a prisoner exchange and the Philadelphi Corridor remain unresolved.
“One paragraph has a very technical fix, and the other three paragraphs have to do with the exchange of prisoners to hostages, which even Hamas' own text of July 2 explicitly says has to still be negotiated,” said the official.
On Wednesday, in a news conference with foreign media in Jerusalem, Netanyahu reiterated his opposition to withdrawing from the Philadelphi Corridor -- a narrow but strategic 9-mile (14-kilometer) strip of land that runs along Gaza's border with Egypt.
Netanyahu has cited concerns that Hamas might use the area to facilitate smuggling from Egypt if Israeli forces withdraw. Critics argue that Netanyahu's stance on the corridor has complicated the wider cease-fire deal
Hamas continues to demand a full Israeli withdrawal from the enclave and the return of displaced Palestinians.
Israel currently holds at least 9,500 Palestinian prisoners, while it estimates that 101 Israeli hostages are being held in Gaza, an unknown number of whom are believed to have been killed while in captivity.