The trouble with trying to do deals with an amoral, savage terrorist regime that has just slaughtered over 1,000 of your people, abducted over 200 to its underground hell, and is trying to destroy your country, is, well, precisely that you are dealing with an amoral, savage terrorist regime that has just slaughtered over 1,000 of your people, abducted over 200 to its underground hell, and is trying to destroy your country.
Israel’s political leaders gradually internalized that doing everything possible to achieve the return of as many of those hostages as possible was the most urgent priority of its fightback against Hamas after October 7. They realized that there could be no victory, no matter how successful the IDF’s assault on Hamas, without the return of all of the hostages or at least without the government being recognized by the people of Israel as having done everything in its power to get all the hostages back. Otherwise, even the demolition of Hamas and the deterring of Israel’s other enemies would not be sufficient to restore public faith in the political and military leadership that so failed them on October 7 by ignoring Hamas’s open preparations for its monstrous assault on our people.
But as expected, Hamas is exploiting Israelis’ love of life to extract every possible advantage from the current four-day lull in the IDF’s war on its Gaza killing machine. The first day’s scheduled release of hostages, on Thursday, didn’t happen at all. Postponed to Friday, it only went ahead amid further delays. Saturday’s phase two was an exercise in orchestrated psychological terror, with Hamas first stating that it had transferred the hostages to the Red Cross, immediately saying it hadn’t, and then issuing spurious accusations against Israel for not supplying as much fuel and humanitarian aid as promised and releasing the wrong Palestinian security prisoners.
Toying not just with Israel, and especially the families of those who had been told to expect their loved ones’ releases, Hamas also made fools of the Qatari and Egyptian interlocutors, and even compelled the leader of the free world to get directly involved, with US President Joe Biden working the phones to get the process back on track. With Israel reportedly threatening to resume the ground offensive if the hostages were not in Israeli hands by midnight, Hamas deigned to go through with Saturday’s phase, while breaching a reported commitment not to release hostage children without their hostage mothers.
As of this writing, there’s no knowing how Sunday’s phase three of the releases will play out, if at all. As IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Saturday night, “nothing is final until it actually happens.” Or to quote Biden on Friday, “I don’t trust Hamas to do anything right. I only trust Hamas to respond to pressure.”
Not halfway done
For now, it would seem, seven weeks into the Israeli effort to tear it apart, Hamas seems to be holding together quite effectively. The best estimate is that perhaps 4,000-5,000 of its gunmen are dead; that leaves another 20,000-25,000 who are not.
Israel controls much of northern Gaza, and has destroyed much of Hamas’s infrastructure there, but most of the Hamas tunnel network in the north may well still be intact. According to former generals including Amos Yadlin, Yisrael Ziv and Giora Eiland, the ground operation is certainly not even half-completed, with central and southern Gaza yet to be tackled, notably including Hamas strongholds such as Khan Younis. And the logistics of fighting in southern Gaza, now unprecedentedly populated with its own residents and hundreds of thousands of evacuees from the north, will present immense challenges to the IDF, even as almost all of the international community steps up pressure for a permanent ceasefire.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s Gaza chief, speaks during a meeting in Gaza City, on April 30, 2022. (Mahmud Hamas/AFP)
Yahya Sinwar, the presumed orchestrator of both October 7 and Hamas’s viciously cynical self-preservation tactics since — including the sacrifice of any and all Gazan noncombatants to the cause of his Jew-killing, Israel-destroying, Islamist death cult — would appear to remain in highly effective control of much of the Strip. And if it’s not him, then it’s others in the leadership.
Since the truce went into effect, and as of this writing, it has been near-impeccably maintained — by Hamas and every other terrorist outfit in the Strip — belying widely cited assessments in Israel that Hamas might prove unable to impose the halt in fighting on all the armed Israel-haters in Gaza.
Saturday night’s grim theatrics also suggested a leadership managing events, pushing psychological terror to the limits, and knowing when to climb down.
And the mechanics of the deal itself show tactical and strategic cunning. There is an emphasis on fuel entering the Strip — fuel that Israel knows will be subverted for the Hamas war machine — as part of a wider humanitarian aid influx that the US has been pressuring Israel to allow throughout the war.
Palestinian security prisoners released by Israel are welcomed to the West Bank town of Al Bireh, early November 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Nasser Nasser)
Meanwhile, the daily releases of West Bank and East Jerusalem Palestinian security prisoners — albeit not convicted murderers, but many would-be murderers, several of them notorious figures — have seen scenes of celebration that point to rising popularity for Hamas, at the expense of the Palestinian Authority, as the liberator of freedom fighters.
IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari stands next to what he says are weapons left behind by Hamas inside Al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City, on November 22, 2023. (Photo by Ahikam SERI / AFP)
Unfathomably, unconscionably and catastrophically surprised by Hamas on October 7, the IDF says it has held the upper hand in every confrontation with the terrorist army since the ground operation began, and appears to have anticipated at least some of Hamas’s planned deadly surprises.
Troops have been astounded by the sheer quantity of deadly weaponry used and prepared for use against them — the endless rows of booby-trapped homes, the huge quantities of anti-tank rockets, the vast tunnel network — but they have tackled it resolutely.
Palestinians inspect the damage of a destroyed house following Israeli airstrikes on Gaza City, Wednesday, Nov. 8, 2023. (AP Photo/Abed Khaled)
The ruins left behind as they have proceeded through the north of the Strip will take years to rebuild, the IDF acknowledges. Given the high stakes — the imperative to dismantle a terrorist army that fully intends to regroup and massacre Israelis again and again if allowed to — the military is ordering airstrikes in circumstances it would not have done in the past, with consequent noncombatant casualties, while insisting it is acting within the laws of war and the framework of proportionality.
Back to the war
Hamas is widely expected to seek to string out the current pause in fighting, under a four-day deal for 50 hostages that can be extended an extra day for every 10 more hostages that it releases. The longer the pause, the more complicated for the IDF to resume the ground offensive — especially if Hamas can encourage and force large numbers of northern Gazan evacuees to return to that part of the war zone — and the greater the international pressure for a full ceasefire.
Protesters hold flags and placards as they take part in a pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel demonstration in Trafalgar Square in London, Saturday, Nov. 25, 2023. (AP/Alberto Pezzali)
Israelis are not united behind Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but they are near universally supportive of the war’s mission to dismantle Hamas and get back the hostages. That certainly remains the plan: As IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said on Saturday, “We will return immediately, at the end of the ceasefire, to attacking Gaza, to maneuver in Gaza. We will do it to dismantle Hamas and also to create great pressure to return as quickly as possible and as many hostages as possible, down to the last one of them… We have an obligation to fight and also to risk our lives so that [Israeli citizens] can return to live in safety.”
To put it in the starkest terms, Israelis know this country has no future if the fighting ends with Hamas still a threat, Sinwar still standing, Hezbollah laughing from across the northern border with 10 times the military muscle, and Iran arming, training and inspiring its proxies while proceeding toward the bomb.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi speaks with troops in the Gaza Strip, November 21, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)
“Dismantling” Hamas, to Halevi, is understood to include neutralizing as many of those gunmen as possible, neutralizing Hamas’s commanders, and destroying Hamas’s weaponry, control systems and infrastructure. It is no small task, and even if achieved, is not the end of the challenge.
Support for the antisemitic, anti-infidel ideology predates Israel, and will not be destroyed even if Hamas is defanged as a fighting force. But a post-war Gaza would be one in which terror groups do not rule and cannot rearm — as Hamas was able to do these past years with truckloads of weapons from across the Egyptian border — and in which those many regional players who detest Hamas and fear Iran should be encouraged to play a role.
Israelis attend a rally calling for the release of Israelis held hostage in Gaza, in Tel Aviv, November 25, 2023. (Miriam Alster/Flash90)
But that’s getting ahead of ourselves. Right now, there’s a lull in fighting that Hamas is determined to exploit. An Israel yearning for its hostages to be home — with the families whose loved ones have not been freed, and may not be for a long time, showing astounding nobility and solidarity. International pressure for a permanent ceasefire. A wide, essential determination in Israel to ensure the campaign indeed demolishes Hamas. And a key figure, amid pressures of his own, providing moral clarity and support.
In his remarks on Friday, Biden said he saw a “real chance” that the current pause could be extended — not into a long-term ceasefire but to enable more hostages to be released. He was explicit in supporting Israel’s effort, under Netanyahu, to destroy Hamas: “I’ve encouraged the prime minister to focus on trying to reduce the number of casualties while he is attempting to eliminate Hamas, which is a legitimate objective he has,” said the president. “That’s a difficult task, and I don’t know how long it will take.”
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Hamas’s hostage manipulations show how much control it continues to hold over Gaza - The Times of Israel
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