Twice happy with Israel this week. On Tuesday, the IDF announced that Marwan Issa, a friend of Yahya Sanwar and one of the planners of the October 7 massacre, was found dead in an air force attack on his hiding place three weeks ago. But even before the news of his death, at the ceremony of reading the scroll with soldiers, the Prime Minister announced Because Marwan’s commander and fellow traveler will also be hanged on a tall tree. “We eliminated Haman, we will also eliminate Sanwar,” promised Binyamin Netanyahu. This was probably the first time Israel accepted responsibility for the elimination of the evil Haman.
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Netanyahu’s statement and the IDF spokesman’s announcement received big headlines, but in between the two, a much more important event took place. On Monday evening, Hamas announced that it rejected the outline offered to it for a hostage deal. For the third time in two months, the negotiations collapsed. Behind the impasse were hidden essential issues, not ego disputes and marginal issues. The Hamas leadership demands that Israel stop the war, and in return give all the abductees. A life for a life. Other issues, such as the number of security prisoners to be released, or the return of Palestinian evacuees to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, can be mediated. Israel wants to continue the campaign until Hamas is eliminated.
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The day after Hamas announced the rejection of the outline of the deal, the spokesman of the Qatari Foreign Ministry stood in front of journalists in the capital Doha. The spokesman, Majed Al-Ansari, knew that he would be asked about the failure of the hoped-for deal, but he played the show to the end and broadcast business as usual. “For us, everything is routine,” he replied to a journalist who asked about the status of the talks, “the negotiations are ongoing, and some of the delegations are still here.”
The skilled speaker did what was expected of him and worked to not discourage the millions who were waiting for his mouth to come out with hope, but he himself knew that the truth lay elsewhere. I watched the Qatari official speak and remembered Baron Arad. The situation of our abductees was not so close to the fate of Arad. Unless there is a fateful turn or a surprising development, the chances of their recovery will drop dramatically. The military pressure, designed to convince Sanwar to show flexibility, has been well tried for six months and has not produced results. Sanwar is actually telling himself and us that the more we kill them, the less motivation to free hostages. After all, the kidnapped are a survival card for him, why should he give them cheaply or for nothing. Reality also proved that time works against the hostages. It is a fact that the IDF killed more hostages than it released. Admittedly by accident, but it killed.
Marwan Issa (photo: documentation on social networks, use according to section 27a)
“There is no moral right to stop the war in Gaza, until we return all the abductees to their homes,” said Defense Minister Yoav Galant during his visit to Washington this week. The expectation that military pressure will lead to the release of abductees is not the only premise that is fading away. On Tuesday this week, President Yitzhak Herzog appeared at a conference in Jerusalem. Mobileye inaugurated its new home, and the number one citizen was invited to deliver the keynote speech. Herzog, who is updated on the progress of the negotiations for the hostage deal, also referred to Yahya Sanwar in his speech. Everything begins and ends with him, he said. He is the one who decided on the massacre, and he is the one who is working to do everything to destroy the common life here. “There is no choice, we have to bring him alive or dead, so that we can see the abductees at home,” stated the president.
What will really happen if we kill Yahya Sanwar, and the abductees are still in his hands? The heart says that his followers in the military wing of Hamas will be overwhelmed, will be filled with despair and will rush to strive for a ceasefire and exchange deals. Well, why would they do that, if in any case the IDF will continue to crush and kill them after the truce. Another scenario makes no less sense, according to which they will harden their positions. By killing Sanwar, Israel will have someone to negotiate with. There is no guarantee that someone will watch over the abductees and supervise their security in his absence. It is difficult to grasp, and still, as far as the abductees are concerned, Sanwar is the cause of the damage and at the same time also the insurance policy.
The case of Ron Arad
There have been things before. During the negotiations for an exchange deal with Hezbollah after the kidnapping of our three soldiers in Mount Dov in October 2000, the leaders of the organization were looking for reliable information about Ron Arad in order to use him for their needs as a card in the negotiations. In May 1988, IDF forces raided the village of Maidon, which served as a stronghold of Hezbollah. Arad was kept at that time in the distant village of Nabi Shit. Six years later, the newspaper “A-Sharq al-Awast” revealed that his captors murdered him in revenge for the death of their relatives in the raid on Maidan.
It is possible that if the IDF had unlimited time, and the abductees were protected and guarded, it would be possible to build on the military pressure that would lead to their release. But every bomb dropped in the Gaza Strip today could land on the head of an Israeli abductee. Or else to come to an account with him.
The leaders of Hamas and their fighters are indeed mortals, and with the punishment that the IDF is exacting from them these days, they have earned every right. Nothing.
Last week I described here how Iraq degenerated into chaos and was torn by a war between sects and centers of power. Gaza may degenerate to where Baghdad fell after the American invasion. Imagine that in a year, after we topple Hamas, unknown people will fire a volley of rockets at Ashkelon. Who will the IDF punish and against whom will it launch an operation?
The Egyptians are coming back and begging Israel these days to stop the war. First, to prevent the mass killing of civilians in Rafah, and perhaps also the infiltration of refugees into their territory. Second, to preserve some form of rule in the Gaza Strip for the day after and integrate Hamas into the future rule as a second fiddle under the PA’s sovereignty. And of course to rescue the kidnapped from captivity.
For the Egyptians, Hamas is clipping its wings like a little dictator. On the one hand, there will be an address there, an authority that will prevent the development of a dangerous terror nest in the Strip; On the other hand, it will be too weak to fight Israel forcefully. In Jerusalem, they listen to this advice with ease, but refuse to take it, and as you know, refuse to present a convincing alternative for the day when Hamas will no longer be here.
The writer is the commentator on Arab affairs of Gali IDF