Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, a longtime confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, will lead talks on phase two of the hostage release-ceasefire deal with Hamas, according to Hebrew media reports on Tuesday.
Mossad chief David Barnea has led previous rounds.
Netanyahu pushed aside Barnea, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and IDF hostage point man Nitzan Alon, with whom he has sparred throughout the negotiations. The security chiefs have long felt that a deal could and should have been reached earlier but that political considerations in Israel hampered those efforts.
Bar revealed in a recent conversation that he is no longer part of Israel’s hostage negotiating team, the Kan public broadcaster reported. His apparent ouster follows reports that Netanyahu is looking to fire him entirely.
Barnea and Bar were also not invited to a crucial security discussion in Netanyahu’s office on Tuesday evening, Channel 13 reported, as Israel’s leadership formulates its position on talks regarding phase two.
An Israeli official told the Times of Israel that Netanyshu has not yet given approval for an Israeli negotiating team to head to Qatar for the talks.
Yet momentum is slowly building, with US pressure. Dermer is slated to meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff to discuss the second phase in the coming days, the Walla news site reported.
Mossad chief David Barnea (R) and Shin Bet director Ronen Bar, attend a ceremony marking the Hebrew calendar anniversary of the Hamas attack on October 7 last year that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem on October 27, 2024. (GIL COHEN-MAGEN / AFP)
Channel 12 reported that some of the hostage families are concerned about Netanyahu’s decision to place Dermer at the head of Israel’s hostage negotiating team.
The families pointed to remarks Dermer made in recent meetings with them during which he said he would not support any hostage deal that brings about an end to the war before Hamas has been fully dismantled.
Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said on Tuesday that Israel would in the coming days begin negotiations on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire deal, including an exchange of the remaining Israeli hostages for more Palestinian security prisoners, and added that Israel is demanding a complete demilitarization of the enclave.
It is believed that another 24 living hostages could be released under phase two of the deal.
Sa’ar told foreign journalists in Jerusalem that the talks would begin “this week.”
Foreign Affairs Minister Gideon Sa’ar leads a faction meeting of his New Hope party in the Knesset, February 17, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
“We had a security cabinet meeting last night. We decided to open negotiations on the second phase. It will happen this week,” he said of the talks, which were originally supposed to start on February 3.
Khalil al-Hayya, a senior Hamas official, said in a statement that Hamas is prepared to immediately begin negotiations regarding phase two of the deal.
Sa’ar said Israel will not accept any scenario in which Gaza terror groups retain weapons.
A “Hezbollah model” in Gaza would not be acceptable to Israel “and therefore we need a total demilitarization of Gaza and no presence of the Palestinian Authority,” he said in a press conference.
Israel will not support a plan that would see civilian control of Gaza transferred from Hamas to the Palestinian Authority, Sa’ar specified.
The ceasefire stipulates that the parties must begin negotiations regarding phase two of the deal no later than the 16th day of the first phase, which was on February 3, but talks have yet to begin. The second phase provides for the end of the war and the withdrawal of all IDF troops from Gaza.
Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — 19 Israeli civilians and female soldiers, and five Thai nationals — during the current ceasefire, which began on January 19. The terror group also freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Israeli captives, from left to right, Ohad Ben Ami, Eli Sharabi and Or Levy, who have been held hostage by Hamas in Gaza since October 7, 2023, onstage before being handed over to the Red Cross in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Feb. 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Seventy captives remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding al-Sayed and Mengistu, the two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
It’s not (only) about you.
Supporting The Times of Israel isn’t a transaction for an online service, like subscribing to Netflix. The ToI Community is for people like you who care about a common good: ensuring that balanced, responsible coverage of Israel continues to be available to millions across the world, for free.
Sure, we’ll remove all ads from your page and you’ll unlock access to some excellent Community-only content. But your support gives you something more profound than that: the pride of joining something that really matters.
Join the Times of Israel Community
Join our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
You’re a dedicated reader
We’re really pleased that you’ve read X Times of Israel articles in the past month.
That’s why we started the Times of Israel – to provide discerning readers like you with must-read coverage of Israel and the Jewish world.
So now we have a request. Unlike other news outlets, we haven’t put up a paywall. But as the journalism we do is costly, we invite readers for whom The Times of Israel has become important to help support our work by joining The Times of Israel Community.
For as little as $6 a month you can help support our quality journalism while enjoying The Times of Israel AD-FREE, as well as accessing exclusive content available only to Times of Israel Community members.
Thank you,
David Horovitz, Founding Editor of The Times of Israel
Join Our Community
Join Our Community
Already a member? Sign in to stop seeing this
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
