The hostage deal
The Promising Land #3: Will Hamas use truce to rearm and plot another attack on Israel?
The Promising Land is a recurring column about Israel, the opportunities and threats it faces, and its place in a changing Middle East. This is The Promising Land #3.
It’s not hard to see why Israel’s security cabinet approved the hostage deal with Hamas.
For six weeks now, 240 Israelis, including small children and elderly people, have been held at gunpoint by Palestinian terrorists. Their families in Israel and around the world desperately want them home.
The agreement that has been signed off will see Hamas hand over 50 living female and child hostages. In return, it will get:
A 96-hour pause in hostilities
The release of 150 Palestinian ‘security prisoners’ from Israeli jails. (Yes, ‘security prisoners’ is a euphemism, but the Israelis insist no one convicted of murder will be freed.)
No UAV surveillance of southern Gaza for four days
No UAV surveillance of northern Gaza between 10am and 4pm for four days
Fuel and medical aid permitted entry to all areas of Gaza
No arrests by Israel of anyone in the Gaza Strip for four days
The Israelis are also offering a further day’s truce for every ten hostages freed.
The deal could go into effect as soon as tomorrow. Most Israelis will just be glad to get these people home but some more sceptical of the deal fear what happens next. Four days is time Hamas can use to move the 190 remaining hostages, transit weapons and fighters across the Strip, and relocate senior commanders. There is a reason why they were so insistent on the pause in Israeli aerial intelligence-gathering. The 150 ‘security prisoners’ may not contain anyone convicted of murder but Israel will likely be doing further business with some of them in the future.
The more immediate concern, however, is what happens after the 96 hours are up. Will Hamas dangle the possibility of additional hostage releases to buy itself more time? And, if so, what preparations will it be making in the interim for fresh assaults on Israel?
Even when the military operation resumes, Israel has few options for progress because it has defined its theatre so narrowly. Making northern Gaza its initial focus made sense. It is from this part of the Strip that many Hamas rockets are launched at Israel. Many of the October 7 terrorists entered the country via this part of the territory.
But the key operational figures inside Hamas fled south along with the civilian population, while the key leadership figures are mostly in Qatar. The road to Israeli victory, or at least a chance of victory, runs through southern Gaza. This is why it was imperative that Egypt allow Gazans to exit via Rafah, so that Israel could target Hamas infrastructure and those terrorists who remained in Gaza after the rest inevitably fled among the civilian population to Sinai.
It’s not a question of whether Israel is prepared for expanding south but whether Washington will allow it to do so. President Biden would come under intense pressure to block the opening of a new front from the Gulf Arab states, the European Union, and the left of his party. It would be hotly opposed by the State Department, which exists to identify US global interests and make sure they never find their way into US policy. (Any resemblance to the UK’s Foreign Office is purely coincidental.)
For Biden to okay an expansion into south Gaza, he would have to be convinced that operations would be swift and would do enough damage to terrorist infrastructure to diminish Hamas’s capacity and resources for some time. Whether Israel could devise an operation that meets those criteria is an open question. It would also likely involve significant loss of Palestinian life, something the Biden administration has already complained about.
If the Biden administration does decide to oppose a move southwards, it would leave Israel with an awful dilemma: press ahead in defiance of the United States, its strongest ally, or devise an exit strategy that allows it to wind down the current fighting and switch to alternative tactics, such as tactical strikes and wetwork against Hamas commanders. This, too, comes with security and diplomatic risks.
For all the hyperbole and hysterics from Israel’s enemies, Jerusalem is running as precise and targeted a campaign as it is possible to run in Gaza. If Israel had waged its war in the style of the Allies in World War II, the civilian death toll would have been incalculable. Instead, it has proceeded mindful of the widespread penetration of Hamas in civilian centres, the population density of the territory in question, and the dual use of facilities such as hospitals, schools and refugee camps by both civilians and terrorists. The humanitarian benefits of this approach are considerable even if they are largely unacknowledged by the world but the military drawbacks are not insignificant.
Some of the hostages are coming home. This is a good thing. Fuel and medicines are going into Gaza. Provided Hamas doesn’t hoard them for itself as it usually does, this will be a good thing too. But Israel is running out of time to complete its mission, and the more incomplete that mission is when the cessation of hostilities comes, the faster Hamas will be able to regroup, rearm and repeat massacres like October 7. That will not only lead to the deaths of more Israelis but of Palestinians too.
Israel needs and is entitled to live freely, peacefully and securely within defensible borders. The Palestinians need to build their current, limited autonomy into political arrangements that bring stability, prosperity and an end to their century-long, self-harming war against Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. That is not the utopian peace dreamed up by the romantics of Oslo and so many other failed peace processes, but it could make for a practical peace that sidelines grand visions in favour of making the lives of Israelis and Palestinians materially better and safer.
Hamas is not the only roadblock to a practical peace but it is one of them and anyone who cares about the future of the Palestinians should wish to see this roadblock removed. The question is whether Israel will be able to achieve that in its current operation. The answer is not at all clear.
Thank you for the report. I cannot trust Hamas and looks like Israel has got the short straw. They will regroup but hopefully satellite surveillance will expose these barbarous low life.
Thank you again for your insight and rational assessment regarding this ongoing situation. Just wish some of your contemporaries would be less hysterical about Israel and recognize the biblical implications of conflict in the Holy Land.