Israel Will Have to Pay a Heavy but Inevitable Price for Hostage-release Deal

After talking about ‘total victory’ for months, Netanyahu folded under Trump’s pressure. The emerging deal means Israel will forgo the obliteration of Hamas’ regime, leaving the terror group free to entrench its position in Palestinian society – but there is no choice: the hostages and soldiers being killed in Gaza for no reason are out of time.

To consider mankind otherwise than brethren, to think favours are peculiar to one nation and exclude others, plainly supposes a darkness in the understanding: John Woolman (1720 – 1772); American Quaker, tailor, journalist and active opponent of slavery

NB: ‘There is certainly value in continuing to pummel Hamas‘ – this part-sentence in the piece below is indicative of the proverbial blind eye which continues to operate for many Israeli’s and their ideological sympathisers. The death toll in Gaza was already nearly 65,000 last June; and could be well over 100,000 by now. Is it possible that you would talk so blithely if a fraction of that number comprised the inhabitants of the so-called ‘Western democracies’ ? The criminal behavior of IDF soldiers and settlers has been recorded by this Israeli citizen. Bombing hospitals, schools, so-called safe areas, killing relief workers and doctors, babies freezing to death, tens of thousands women and children killed – and you call this ‘pummeling Hamas’. And the leaders of ‘world order’ think they will establish peace with the help of Arab despots; and the Palestinian people will settle down for another phase of semi-permanent ‘normalcy’ under Israeli servitude. Your racism is something you can’t get behind yourselves. Your lives are worth more than the lives of Palestinians or Arabs, or black and brown-skinned people. All of us are grass, to be mowed down whenever it pleases you. Three centuries ago, the American Quaker John Woolman possessed more human empathy than you. We have memories. DS

Amos Harel

The hostage deal negotiations appear to be heading toward a positive conclusion, as of late Monday evening. Under heavy U.S. pressure, Israel has crossed previous red lines and is now ready to announce a deal, even before Donald Trump is inaugurated as the president of the United States next week.

However, as usual, there are reservations. The first is the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, could still back out as has happened many times before in the history of the negotiations. The second is that despite the positive signal, a final answer from Hamas had still not been given, in particular from the organization’s leader in Southern Gaza, Mohammed Sinwar.

On the reasonable assumption that a deal will indeed be reached, the critical factor (as was reported here a month ago) is the Trump effect. The incoming president has much more leverage over Netanyahu and the Egyptian and Qatari mediators than does the outgoing president, Joe Biden. The best example of Trump’s influence was the unusual Shabbat morning meeting in which the prime minister hosted the incoming president’s special Middle East envoy, Steven Witkoff. The envoy explained to his host in no uncertain terms that Trump expected him to agree to a deal. Things that Netanyahu had termed life-and-death issues (does anyone still remember the bedrock of our existence, the Philadelphi Corridor?) suddenly vanished.

But it is also worthwhile not forgetting tectonic changes, both political and strategic, occurring here. Netanyahu agreed last May, under pressure from Biden, to a proposal that included the gradual but full withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, an end to the war and the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners. Afterward, he backtracked, using Philadelphi as an excuse. In the ensuing months, he raised more obstacles. (In his defense, Hamas also caused problems.)

Over those months, at least eight hostages died, two killed by Israeli bombs and six murdered by Hamas. Another 122 Israeli soldiers were killed, a third of them in the assault on Jabalya and Beit Hanoun that began last October.

There is certainly value in continuing to pummel Hamas, but it has not been defeated and complete victory is not waiting around the corner. Netanyahu’s claim that only military pressure will lead to the release of hostages – a claim that has sometimes been backed by the IDF brass – has proven to be baseless.

And now, the prime minister is folding. If there wasn’t so much at stake, one could watch with glee the crisis of faith his followers are experiencing on his propaganda apparatus. They are being forced to choose whether to align themselves with the new talking points from his bureau (we have not given up; the agreement is part of a bigger and more valuable strategic arrangement) or to remain faithful to the line they were taking just two days ago, which presented any compromise as a danger to Israel’s security.

The thought enters my heart that there has been no miscalculation since (and apart from) the terrible intelligence failure of October 7 on par with the joy that the Israeli right and the settlers felt over Trump’s election victory. It’s not that Trump doesn’t like us, but he has other interests. A major agreement with Saudi Arabia, including the normalization of Israeli-Saudi regulations; a new nuclear agreement with Iran; and a Nobel Peace Prize. The suspicion is beginning to rise that all of these goals are slightly more important to him than the dream of resettling the Northern Gaza Strip or annexing the West Bank.

A weak point worth considering concerns the division of the agreement into two phases. Negotiations on the second phase are supposed to begin on the 16th day after it is signed, while the first phase is being implemented. The understandable fear shared by the hostage families is that these talks will collapse, and that the only hostages that will be brought back are those from the first, humanitarian phase, namely women, elderly men, the sick and the wounded. Soldiers and young men will remain captives of Hamas for a long time as an insurance policy on the lives of the organization’s leaders.

Trump may believe that he will succeed in bringing Netanyahu into a kind of “corral.” After the first phase has been completed, immense pressure will be exerted on the prime minister to free the remaining living hostages in a deal and bring back the bodies of the dead.

Israel will need to make many more unpleasant choices in the agreement now coming together. As could have been suspected in advance, it will not ensure the elimination of Hamas rule despite the promises Netanyahu and his cabinet ministers made. The need to save the lives of some 50 hostages before they die in the tunnels thus means giving up on the second declared goal of the war.

Without a doubt, Hamas will exploit the freeing of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners to enhance its status with the Palestinian public both in Gaza and in the West Bank. An Israeli withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor and from part of the Philadelphi Corridor in the first stage will limit IDF control over Gaza. The agreement does not ensure any kind of real supervision over the return of Palestinians to Northern Gaza.

All of these concessions were not only forced on Israel by Trump but are also being undertaken to begin the process of bringing home the hostages, both alive and dead. This is a heavy but unavoidable price. That said, no one can ignore what occurred in the war – great damage to Hamas, to its political and military leadership, to its military infrastructure and the massive destruction of Gaza that will be remembered by Palestinians for generations to come as the collective price they paid for the terrible crime of the October 7 massacre.

Further down the road, in the most optimistic scenario, awaits long-term quiet in Gaza together with an international reconstruction effort that the Gulf oil powers will fund in exchange for Hamas’ giving up control. The Palestinian Authority, despite all its problems, will be a partner in Gaza’s new governing arrangements. This could be part of a larger arrangement for the Middle East, which Trump envisages, including the Saudi plans and normalization.

It is not yet clear at what pace the incoming U.S. administration will advance this vision and whether the thinking on this has sufficiently crystallized. But, if Netanyahu sees Israel as being a part of the plan, he will have a difficult time keeping his coalition intact in its current form for very long. Right now, his far-right partners Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir publicly oppose the hostage deal, but they are not vowing to resign from the government over it.

Over the longer term, if the Trump administration does advance a focused plan for the region, it may have enormous implications for the Israeli political system. Netanyahu will need to decide whether to call an election; whether to ally with the political center and break his long-standing alliance with the extremists; and even what will happen in his trial (a plea deal?).

The bleeding is spreading

But all this is a distant vision. In the meantime, until a deal is signed, Israel is bleeding in Gaza. On Monday, another five soldiers belonging to the Nahal Brigade’s Reconnaissance Battalion were killed in Beit Hanoun in North Gaza. Another eight were seriously wounded. They were probably the victims of an operation error that caused an ordnance explosion. As a result, the number of fallen soldiers in the area has risen to 15 in less than a week. It’s not just that time is running out for the hostages. Soldiers, too, are dying without any clear reason in a prolonged operation in Northern Gaza.Open gallery view

The large number of deaths in Beit Hanoun quickly elicited criticism from the media outlets identified with the government. The General Staff was once again accused of weakness. It was said that operations based on raids by relatively small forces operating from within Palestinian territory are ineffective. That fact is Hamas continues to cause casualties.

It may be that these tactics are indeed inappropriate. But army leaders say reinforcing the forces in Gaza is conditioned on the allocation of available forces. It was the political echelon that instructed the General Staff to reduce the number of reservists in active service to 50,000 for cost-saving reasons. The General Staff says that even the current 70,000 reservists is not enough at a time when it has to deploy troops in southern Lebanon, on the Syrian border, Gaza and in the West Bank.

If the negotiations on a hostage deal in the end fail, a heated public debate will likely open on the value of holding territory in Northern Gaza. The extreme right is striving for solutions, such as establishing a military government and employing foreign subcontractors to distribute food to the Palestinian public. The military warns that such a move will fail and will ultimately end with the army taking over the work and result in soldiers being killed while distributing flour to Palestinian civilians.

In practice, despite the heavy losses sustained by Hamas, it is clear that the operation has not yielded decisive results. The fighting in Jabaliya has subsided, but an estimated several dozen active terrorists remain there. A similar number are also active in Beit Hanoun and have managed to inflict relatively heavy losses on the Israeli forces. The terrorists are apparently using tunnels that have not yet been found, and are relying on food and goods Hamas has stored in the ruined town months ago.

Source: HAARETZ

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