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With help from Alex Ward, Daniel Lippman and Olivia Alafriz
PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off for Thanksgiving this Thursday and Friday but back to our normal schedule on Monday, Nov. 27.
The Israeli hostage deal reached with Hamas allows for fighting to pause for four to five days, but Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU also left the door open for more: “The release of every 10 additional abductees will result in an additional day of respite,” the Israeli government said in a statement.
The question is: Will the militant group take him up on that offer, and if so, how?
There’s no limit on how long Israel might halt its operations in Gaza, a senior Israeli official told The Washington Post’s DAVID IGNATIUS after the deal was announced. Principal deputy national security adviser JON FINER didn’t specify how long a pause could last when asked if that part of the deal could lead to a cease-fire.
“The goal is going to be to try to get more hostages out even after the four-day pause and the 50 hostages have been released,” Finer said on CNN this morning. “That’s going to depend on the two sides. It will need to involve the release of more hostages and the agreement for the fighting to pause on an ongoing basis.”
But while Israel and the U.S. want to secure the release of as many hostages as possible, Hamas also could have reasons to hold onto as much leverage as it can afford.
Some basic math: If there are about 200 hostages left in Hamas’ captivity, that means there could be up to 20 more days without fighting — under the terms in the Israeli government’s statement — if the militant group releases all of them. Many observers believe Hamas is unlikely to let them all go at once, however, based on its history.
Taking hostages and releasing them in exchange for a particular demand has been a major part of Hamas’ strategy over the years. The current head of Hamas, YAHYA SINWAR, for example, was discharged from an Israeli prison as part of a 2011 prisoner swap.
In the current conflict, Israel believes Hamas only wants a break in fighting so that it can regroup and continue, which is why Netanyahu has been resistant to extended pauses.
“Hamas is trying to … prolong the cease-fires and make it harder for Israel to continue doing what it’s doing,” MAIRAV ZONSZEIN, a senior analyst with the International Crisis Group, told NatSec Daily. “They’re probably going to try to get more and more pauses as they go forward with these hostages.”
It took some time for the Israeli government to agree to the terms, but in the end, Netanyahu also saw the upsides of the hostage deal.
From the outset of the war, “the hostages were not a priority [for Netanyahu] and they weren’t really being talked about. And then they became the priority through public pressure,” Zonszein said.
But as Alex wrote last night, the deal was becoming more important for Netanyahu to get done soon: While the Israeli people were behind the war, they still faulted him for failing to secure the nation from Hamas and for failing to bring Israeli hostages home. An agreement wasn’t just the moral thing to do. It was a political necessity.
The deal did, however, anger far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s coalition, who voted against what they described as “bad” terms since it didn’t secure a return of all the hostages and they felt it lowered the chances of eliminating Hamas, according to Israeli media.
The U.S. and Israel still see this deal as the best move right now: “We are determined to get them all out. That has been a main demand of this deal,” a senior Biden administration official told reporters Tuesday night before the announcement.
Read: Biden admin officials see proof their strategy is working in hostage deal by Alex, ADAM CANCRYN and JONATHAN LEMIRE.
The Inbox
BREAKING — EXPLOSION NEAR THE BORDER: U.S. and Canadian law enforcement are investigating a vehicle explosion today at a bridge connecting the two countries, and are tightening security along the U.S. northern border, our own ERIC BAZAIL-EIMIL and KYLE DUGGAN report.
CAN UKRAINE LAST? Ukraine’s strongest supporters in Washington are looking at the three-week sprint after Thanksgiving as their best remaining hope of getting aid to the country, but they remain vexed about how to move a bill through the Republican-run House, our own JENNIFER HABERKORN and JONATHAN LEMIRE report.
The dynamics of the GOP House have alarmed the West Wing. Speaker MIKE JOHNSON has indicated that he’ll at some point bring a vote on Ukraine, but those in the White House do not yet have a clear read on the new Republican leader or his negotiating style, two senior aides told our colleagues.
On two occasions already, Democrats tried but failed to get aid to Ukraine in a must-pass funding bill. With another deadline to spark action not coming until the latest stopgap funding bills expire in late January and early February, many of Congress’ strongest Ukraine backers fear the country can’t wait that long.
“I don’t know that Ukraine can survive until February of 2024,” Sen. CHRIS MURPHY (D-Conn.) said. “My sense is they start to run short on ammunition in the next several weeks.”
ASSASSINATION PLOT IN U.S. THWARTED: U.S. officials foiled a plan to assassinate a Sikh separatist on American soil, multiple people familiar with the case told The Financial Times’ DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO.
The target was reportedly GURPATWANT SINGH PANNUN, an American and Canadian citizen who is general counsel for the Sikhs for Justice campaign group, which advocates for an independent Sikh state.
“We are treating this issue with utmost seriousness, and it has been raised by the U.S. Government with the Indian Government, including at the senior-most levels,” NSC spokesperson ADRIENNE WATSON told NatSec Daily. “Indian counterparts expressed surprise and concern. They stated that activity of this nature was not their policy.”
The Indian government is investigating the matter and “will have more to say about it in the coming days,” Watson added.
The thwarted plot comes two months after Canada said it had evidence linking India to the killing of a Sikh separatist near Vancouver, causing diplomatic relations between the countries to deteriorate.
U.S. DATA SENT TO ISRAEL: The Biden administration has been providing Israel with the location of humanitarian groups in Gaza for weeks to prevent strikes against their facilities, but Israel has continued to hit such sites, our own ERIN BANCO and NAHAL TOOSI reported Tuesday.
The information included GPS coordinates of a number of medical facilities and information on movements of aid groups in Gaza to the Israeli government for at least a month, according to three people familiar with the communications. Still, Israel has launched operations against Hamas in or near aid sites, including hospitals, leading to the destruction of buildings and the blocking of fuel and other critical supplies.
FINNISH FURY: Finland decided to close all but one of its border crossing points with Russia today, accusing Moscow of sending hundreds of asylum-seekers to the frontier.
“We do consider this a serious threat to national security, and not only to Finland … to the security of the entire region,” Finnish Foreign Minister ELINA VALTONEN told NatSec Daily in an interview.
Finland says over the past month, more than 600 people without valid documentation to enter the European Union have arrived at the border with Russia. Valtonen said Helsinki has evidence of Russian officials “actively bringing” people to the border, while the Kremlin denies the accusations.
Valtonen said it’s unclear why Russia may be sending asylum-seekers toward Finland. Helsinki’s move to join NATO earlier this year heightened tensions with Moscow, but the minister said the movement of asylum-seekers likely isn’t retaliation over that decision.
“We are a sovereign nation, and we are free to make our own decisions. … Finland has never posed a threat to Russia,” she said. “If that were the case, then obviously they would not have booked their troops away from the Finnish border to Ukraine.”
Helsinki will consider more measures to stop the movement of asylum-seekers if Russia keeps it up, she added: “We are not negotiating with them.”
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2024
GOOD NOT GREAT: GOP presidential candidate NIKKI HALEY applauded the Israel-Hamas hostage deal but said it doesn’t go far enough.
“I am overjoyed that families may soon be reunited with their loved ones. But the world must demand more from Hamas. Why only 50 hostages? Demand Hamas release ALL the hostages NOW,” she tweeted this morning.
Keystrokes
UKRAINE’S WINTER WOES: Kyiv’s energy infrastructure heading into winter is more fragile than a year ago, causing concerns that Russia will resume large-scale attacks on its power grid again, Ukrainian experts and current and former officials told The New York Times’ CONSTANT MÉHEUT.
“Not a lot has changed since then,” VICTORIA VOYTSITSKA, a former lawmaker and senior member of the Ukrainian parliament’s energy committee, told the NYT. “We’re in a much worse situation than last year.”
Ukraine has improved one thing: Its ability to shoot down missiles and drones before they hit the power grid has increased since last year. But Kyiv says its thermal power plants will supply the same amount of power they did over the summer, suggesting few repairs have been done in recent months.
The Complex
SPACE DEBATE: A bipartisan group of lawmakers is worried that NASA’s decision to cut funding for its own mission to bring Martian samples back to Earth would cost hundreds of jobs and hurt the U.S. in its space competition with China, your NatSec Daily anchor reports.
NASA’s move came amid uncertainty over whether Congress can agree to a full-year budget. With the Mars Sample Return mission scaled down, jobs at the Jet Propulsion Lab in California — which sends robots to the Red Planet — could be at risk.
“We are mystified by NASA’s rash decision to suggest at this stage of the appropriations process that any cuts would be necessary,” states a letter led by California Rep. ADAM SCHIFF and Sen. ALEX PADILLA, sent to NASA chief BILL NELSON. They also called the agency’s move “short-sighted and misguided.”
But NASA argued that “significant reductions in spending must be implemented immediately or the program will not have sufficient funds to last through the fiscal year,” MARGARET VO SCHAUS, the space agency’s chief financial officer, said in a statement.
On the Hill
WHITE HOUSE ANSWERS UKRAINE SKEPTICS: House Republican skeptics spent months pressing the administration to better explain the endgame for the war in Ukraine before they sign off on more money. The White House has answered them, our own CONNOR O’BRIEN scooped (for Pros!), but it’s unlikely to move the needle.
The White House made the case for its approach and JOE BIDEN’s $61.4 billion supplemental request to assist Kyiv in a lengthy response to a memo outlining House GOP concerns authored by Rep. MIKE GARCIA (R-Calif.). Garcia argued the Biden administration’s counter is effectively to hold the line.
“Overall, it was affirmation that they are intentionally being ambiguous about what the objectives are,” Garcia said of the White House response. “And it clearly doesn’t scratch the itch in terms of compelling people to want to support it.”
The back and forth offers a window into the behind-the-scenes wrangling between the White House and skeptical Republicans on further Ukraine funding. It also signals that those Republicans who flipped against new funding for Kyiv or are on the fence are unlikely to be swayed by this most recent argument.
PROGRESSIVES STILL PUSHING: Progressives aren’t backing down from their push for a longer cease-fire in Gaza despite the hostage deal, which is the greatest diplomatic breakthrough of the early 50-day conflict, our own JOE GOULD, Alex and Connor report.
Rep. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-Mich.), one of Biden’s most strident critics in favor of a cease-fire, was not satisfied with the pause in fighting and pointed to the toll of Palestinians killed or displaced in Gaza. She was among two dozen lawmakers who, in a letter last week, urged Biden to establish a cease-fire.
“When this short-term agreement expires, the bombing of innocent civilians will continue,” she said in a statement Tuesday. “We need a permanent cease-fire that saves lives, brings all the hostages and those arbitrarily detained home, and puts an end to this horrific violence.”
Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.), who has said a cease-fire would help Hamas but has also called for conditions on future military aid to Israel, sketched out a proposed path toward better Israeli-Palestinian relations in a New York Times op-ed today.
Broadsides
U.N. ‘TREPIDATION’: A top U.N. human rights official who resigned from his post in October said an “atmosphere of trepidation” at the organization has built up over the years when it comes to Israel-Palestine relations.
CRAIG MOKHIBER left after 32 years at the organization, marking his exit with a viral letter declaring Israel’s actions in Gaza “a text-book case of genocide.”
Speaking with our own OLIVIA ALAFRIZ, Mokhiber said his frustration brewed over earlier this year when the U.N. gave what he called a “whispered response” to escalating violence in the West Bank.
LAURA GELBERT, a spokesperson for the U.N., disputed the characterization of Mokhiber’s exit as a resignation, instead saying it was a planned retirement. Mokhiber pushed back on that, saying he had decided to leave after months of frustration with U.N. leaders’ response to the violence in Gaza.
Mokhiber’s departure is just one example of how the U.N. has been thrown into disarray by the war. While he criticized the U.N. response to Israel’s actions, Mokhiber also acknowledged that the organization is constrained by both institutional limits and political factors.
He pointed specifically to the structure of the U.N. Security Council, which acts as the institution’s primary enforcement mechanism. The United States, he argued, has historically used its veto power on the council to prevent protective action for Palestinians, thus overriding repeated efforts by other member states.
Read: Macron’s rift with diplomats deepens after missteps on Israel-Hamas war by our own CLEA CAULCUTT.
Transitions
— RACHEL LEVITAN is now senior adviser to the CEO of the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, our own DANIEL LIPPMAN reports. She most recently was senior adviser to Education Secretary MIGUEL CARDONA and is an alum of Sen. TOM CARPER (D-Del.), the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works and the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
What to Read
— CATHERINE RUSSELL, The New York Times: The Public Health Crisis in Gaza That Could Devastate a Generation
— AUDREY KURTH CRONIN, Foreign Affairs: Hamas’s Asymmetric Advantage
— Rep. MIKE FLOOD, Fox News: Time to ban TikTok and end its casual support for terrorism
Monday Today
— The Wilson Center Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, 11 a.m.: Book discussion on “Russia’s War Against Ukraine”
— The Atlantic Council, 1 p.m.: The trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States: A conversation with Under Secretary of State Ambassador BONNIE JENKINS
Thanks to our editor, Emma Anderson, who won’t give us any respite over the Thanksgiving holiday.
We also thank our producer, Emily Lussier, who always brings peace to us, always.
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