Fresh Air

In ABC NewsRadio’s 10 am news bulletin on June 4, newsreader Simon Lauder read a report about the status of the latest ceasefire-for-hostage deal on the table between Israel and Hamas that US President Joe Biden announced on May 31.

Lauder read:

“The United States says it has not heard back from Hamas on President Joe Biden’s ceasefire deal. Mr Biden submitted a proposal last week that would begin with a six-week ceasefire, a surge in humanitarian aid and the exchange of some hostages for Palestinian prisoners. G7 leaders have endorsed the deal and urged countries with influence over Hamas to help ensure that it accepts. US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller says he’s confident Israel will agree. He calls on Hamas to do the same.”

NewsRadio then played an audio clip of Miller saying:

“The world should know, the Palestinian people should know, that the only thing standing in the way of an immediate ceasefire today is Hamas. The proposal on the table is nearly identical to what Hamas said it would accept just a few weeks ago, and it is now time for them to act.”

Unfortunately, ABC TV “News” viewers who watched “News at Noon” shortly afterwards wouldn’t have known that Hamas was the main obstacle, because host Ros Child’s interviewee on the subject, ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons, claimed the opposite.

Ros Childs: And what’s the Hamas response to this proposed deal?

John Lyons: Well, Hamas is trying to position itself now as, yes, we want the ceasefire. They have basically said, yes, we will accept it. And they’re wanting Israel to be seen as the naysayer. But they have basically said they would sign off on it.

Lyons continued on, now completely misrepresenting the deal:

John Lyons: The deal essentially would be six weeks of no fighting. Many of the hostages released, the remaining hostages in return for Palestinian prisoners and a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza.

Lyons got it completely wrong.

He gave the impression that he hadn’t read President Biden’s tweet summarising Israel’s four-and-a-half-page proposal.

Israel has now offered a roadmap to an enduring ceasefire – and the release of all the hostages.

Yesterday, this proposal was transmitted by Qatar to Hamas.

Today, I want to lay out its terms for the world. pic.twitter.com/0cdypBP9wb

— President Biden (@POTUS) May 31, 2024

Nor did Lyons acknowledge one of the reported sticking points. As the Jerusalem Post noted, “the proposal says the ceasefire will continue as long as negotiations take should they take longer than six weeks with the US, Egypt and Qatar working to make sure negotiations keep going.”

This negotiated transition from the first phase to the second phase has been identified as problematic by several Israeli analysts, who are concerned that Hamas could simply drag out the negotiations indefinitely and leave Israel without all of the hostages but without military options as Israel would be pressured not to resume fighting while negotiations are continuing.

As Washington Institute Executive Director Robert Satloff has written, if accurate, this part of the deal stands to create problems down the road. It also may be one of the many reasons why members of Netanyahu’s coalition are wary of it.

Satloff wrote:

• Egypt and Qatar have shown themselves to be woefully incapable of influencing Hamas over the past eight months, so the idea that there is any value in their “assurances” regarding the group’s future behaviour is risible. By contrast, any U.S. administration necessarily has considerable leverage on Israel’s actions given Jerusalem’s reliance on U.S. rearmament and diplomatic backing to sustain its military operations.
• Two key principles outlined in this paragraph—that the United States guarantees Israel’s adherence, and that Israel gets to resume military operations in the event Hamas fails to fulfill its commitments—practically ensure bilateral tension down the road, when Washington and Jerusalem will almost inevitably disagree in their judgment of what constitutes an actionable Hamas violation. Indeed, the group will likely ready itself to engineer such a clash at a moment of heightened instability on another Israeli front (e.g., with Hezbollah or Iran).
• This imbalance—in which the United States guarantees Israeli adherence while other states ineffectually guarantee a terrorist group’s adherence—sets a worrisome precedent that problematic actors will be eager to cut-and-paste into future deals.

Returning to Lyons – remarkably, in the interview with Childs, Lyons made almost the identical reporting mistakes he made in reporting an earlier ceasefire-for-hostage proposal back in early February, something I blogged about at the time.

Then, as now, Lyons erroneously claimed Hamas had agreed to the deal and Israel was holding it up. Then, as now, Lyons reported on the initial six-week ceasefire stage of the proposal without explaining any of the sticking points. And the major detail Israel is having the most trouble with is the part of the proposal that would leave some hostages in Hamas’ hands and their freedom dependent on the outcome of further negotiations

Israel had agreed to a ceasefire and hostage-release deal framework – which had US backing – but is calling for more details.

In fact, earlier that day, Ophir Falk, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s chief foreign policy advisor, told ABC Radio National “Breakfast” to allow for a permanent ceasefire, Israel first needs to work out if their conditions have been met.

Meanwhile, NewsRadio compounded the listener’s confusion by replaying the audio of Lyons’ misinformed interview with Childs twice that afternoon, but also ran: a report by the BBC’s Middle East correspondent Lucy Williamson that included a Gazan woman imploring “Hamas, accept the deal!”; a separate news headline referring to a US push for a UN Security Council Resolution to urge Hamas to accept the deal; and a report by CNN’s Jeremy Diamond that said “we still await Hamas’s official response to this latest proposal.”

Finally, whilst asking her closing question to Lyons, Ros Childs incorrectly claimed that “very little, no aid is getting in”. Instead of correcting her error, Lyons agreed with this inaccurate assertion.

Ros Childs: And Israel’s offensive in Rafah continues. What is the humanitarian situation? Because very little, no aid is getting in.

John Lyons: No aid really is getting in at all. Most of what’s coming through Rafah, that’s closed now. Just desperate, children dying. It’s just absolutely desperate.

There is really no excuse for such shoddy reporting. The facts are available.

In reality, since Egypt closed the Rafah border crossing with Gaza, Israel has used its own crossing at Kerem Shalom – located only three kilometers south – as the primary conduit for humanitarian aid into southern Gaza, and had transferred 222 aid trucks the day before the interview.

Humanitarian aid today, June 3:

🚛259 aid trucks were transferred to Gaza.

🚚222 trucks via the Kerem Shalom crossing
🚚37 trucks via the Erez crossing.

We will continue expanding our efforts to facilitate humanitarian aid into the Gaza Strip. pic.twitter.com/ju3rK5vgOG

— COGAT (@cogatonline) June 3, 2024

It’s little wonder then, that in a social media post on June 1, COGAT, the IDF department that deals with humanitarian aid, specifically termed a “falsehood” the claim that “the crossings are closed and aid isn’t getting into Gaza.”

Two common misconceptions👇 pic.twitter.com/vkrXxFmTYH

— COGAT (@cogatonline) May 31, 2024