In the war ignited by the October 7 massacre, Israel set two goals that were incompatible: retrieving all the hostages and destroying Hamas. I’ve only recently, with the help of a couple of analysts who have pointed this out, come to grasp the incompatibility. I was among those who kept believing Israel could achieve both those goals in tandem with each other.
In the 15+ months of this war so far (it’s still being waged as, at the time of writing, I hear explosions from Gaza 25 miles away), Israel has managed to militarily rescue seven hostages. An eighth was found by troops after his captors had abandoned him.
All of the seven who were military rescued were being held in apartments. Reportedly, after the rescue of four hostages from two apartments in June, all the hostages still being held in apartments were moved to tunnels. There, all of them are closely guarded by terrorists, possibly suicide terrorists. These captors can hear Israeli troops approaching and, if they do, will kill the hostages (and possibly themselves as well). That was what happened to the six Israeli hostages murdered in a tunnel in August.
Some say that, instead of prodding Israel into the current hostage deal at this stage, President-elect Trump should have waited a few more days to take office and then have supported Israel in “starving out” Hamas. But “starving out” Hamas would mean the hostages—already on near-starvation diets and in very weakened condition—would get “starved out” too, and would be in further acute danger from a desperate and vindictive Hamas.
In other words, for those who want to see the hostages freed, something like the current deal is the only option.
The deal has obvious, severe, painful downsides. Freeing hundreds of terrorists with blood on their hands is a horrendous injustice and highly dangerous. Israeli military withdrawals will enable Hamas to begin rearming and rebuilding—as will a stepped-up flow of aid to Gaza. Allowing large numbers of Gazan civilians to return to northern Gaza will boost Hamas’s human-shield resources. The combination of prisoner releases and Israeli withdrawals will be celebrated (is already being celebrated) by many in the Israel-hating world as tokens of a divine victory. The perception that the way to “defeat” Israel is by kidnapping Israelis will be reinforced and will likewise increase danger to Israelis.
Some also cite the danger that, after the first stage of the deal, Hamas will renege and refuse to free the remaining live hostages—young men who are soldiers, or at the age of soldiers. It’s certainly possible, though the deal harbors built-in incentives for Hamas to keep complying with it at that stage; Israel can stop its territorial withdrawals and even appropriate territories, renew the fighting with many of its forces still in Gaza, and keep holding “assets,” including both living and dead terrorists, that Hamas very much wants to be freed. If Hamas, though, decides to gum up the deal at that juncture despite those incentives, at least the most vulnerable hostages will have been freed and Israel will likely have full legitimacy from the Trump administration to resume the fighting.
In any case, apart from the downsides, and in addition to the obvious positive outcome of freeing some still-uncertain number of people from an unimaginable hell and returning the remains of others for normal burial, the deal holds important advantages for Israel.
First, when fighting is resumed—as it inevitably will be at some point, since, even if all the phases of the deal transpire and a ceasefire is in place, Hamas is sure to violate the ceasefire—Hamas may no longer have Israeli hostages as human shields. That consideration has significantly inhibited Israel so far and is one of the major reasons the fighting has lasted as long as it has without a clear defeat of Hamas. But that inhibition will be gone. Or, even if the deal stalls in phase 1 and Hamas still holds some of the hostages, Israel, as noted, should then have the Trump administration’s full backing to restart the war.
Second—although unifying Israel may seem a Sisyphean task—Israel will, at that point, be able to fight with even higher morale and greater unity than it has been able to muster so far. The great majority of the Israelis who have been demanding a hostage deal have been doing so out of intense concern for the hostages, but not because they don’t share the general Israeli detestation of Hamas. Either a freeing of all the hostages, or a clear refusal by Hamas to free those supposed to have been released in the second phase, will have that unifying, morale-fortifying effect in Israel.
And, third, at whatever stage fighting is resumed, there will be an administration in Washington with intensely pro-Israel hawks in the key foreign and defense positions, and a president whose first term in office was the most pro-Israel in history.
As Michael Oren has pointed out, the current hostage deal with its serious downsides was already implicit in the Israeli blunders that enabled the October 7 attack in the first place. The horrifying spectacle of 250 Israelis and others being dragged into captivity by monstrous terrorists and their ecstatic civilian collaborators was not one that presaged any easy solution. The downsides of the deal are a price we are paying for our own failures, but we are still on the way to a big win.
You write out the potential benefits and the definite costs of this "deal" that has also been called a capitulation on Israel's part. I can only hope that the optimism with which you write turns out to be prophetic.
Let’s not forget one crucial point: The ONLY reason Hamas was not decisively defeated months ago is because they prioritized the kidnapping of hundreds of people. This was the primary strategy to ensure they could claim victory. The incredible success of such civilian abductions - low cost and high reward for the average fanatical jihadist - will only incentivize such hostage taking in the future, both in Israel and around the world. This is simple psychology and should come as no surprise to any rational person. Citizens of other liberal democracies are advised to keep this in mind when contemplating the various nefarious actors who threaten their own countries.