Israel should send a delegation "already today" to Cairo to finalize details of a hostage deal, opposition head and Yesh Atid chairman MK Yair Lapid said after an Egyptian official said on Monday that Hamas viewed Israel's proposal favorably.
Lapid spoke on the proposal, which was laid out by US President Joe Biden on Friday night, in a discussion in the Knesset State Control Committee on Monday.
Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir to meet amid minister's threat
The opposition head's comments came after reports earlier on Monday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is planning to meet with far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to discuss the deal.
Ben-Gvir and fellow far-right minister Bezalel Smotrich threatened on Sunday that if the proposal is accepted, they will leave the government over what they claim are unacceptable concessions to Hamas.
Lapid repeated a pledge to serve as a "safety net" for Netanyahu to pass the deal if Ben-Gvir and Smotrich oppose it.
"It cannot be that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich will prevent them [the hostages] from coming home," Lapid said.
In a speech later on Monday in the Knesset plenum, Lapid argued that there were was an overwhelming majority of 82 Members of Knesset who were willing to sign off on the deal, and urged Netanyahu to move forwards with it.
Lapid's calculation was based on the assumption that the two far-right parties, the two haredi parties, and the two Arab parties would oppose or at least not support the deal. However, Construction Minister Yizhak Goldknopf, leader of the haredi Agudat Yisrael faction which numbers four MKs, said on Monday that his faction would support any deal that would bring back the hostages, based on the Jewish creed that there was no greater deed than returning hostages.
Biden on Friday night outlined a three-phase deal in which female, sick, elderly, and wounded hostages would be freed during the first six weeks. The second phase would see the release of the remainder of the captives. The third phase deals with the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of hostages' remains.
Tovah Lazaroff contributed to this report.