Op-ed: Day 208 of the war

All eyes, still, on Hamas

As Israel, the US, the hostages await Hamas’s response to an ‘extraordinarily generous’ Israeli offer, it is a sickening reality that Sinwar’s terror group still holds the key to what is unfolding

David Horovitz

David Horovitz is the founding editor of The Times of Israel. He is the author of "Still Life with Bombers" (2004) and "A Little Too Close to God" (2000), and co-author of "Shalom Friend: The Life and Legacy of Yitzhak Rabin" (1996). He previously edited The Jerusalem Post (2004-2011) and The Jerusalem Report (1998-2004).

Hamas's Gaza Strip leader Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, October 10, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)
Hamas's Gaza Strip leader Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel in southern Gaza's Khan Younis, October 10, 2023. (Israel Defense Forces)

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here

We would appear to be in the midst of a particularly fateful period for Israel, the hostages in Gaza, and the war to destroy Hamas.

As I write, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is holding a series of meetings here with the Israeli leadership, having publicly declared that Israel has made an “extraordinarily generous” offer to Hamas for a hostage-truce deal, and urged Hamas to quickly accept it.

The terms of that offer have not been publicly confirmed, but are widely reported to provide, in a first phase, for the release of 33 living hostages who meet a so-called “humanitarian” designation — women, children, men over 50, the wounded and sick. This would be carried out in return for the release by Israel of something in the region of 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners, many of them serving life terms for murder, in the course of a 40-day halt in the fighting, the return of displaced Gazans to their homes, and a partial IDF troop withdrawal. During that first phase, negotiations would also begin on a process for achieving sustainable calm in Gaza.

A second phase, if reached, would see the release of the rest of the living hostages, in return for many more Palestinian security prisoners, the finalization of an agreement for sustained calm in Gaza, and the full withdrawal of the IDF. In a third and final phase, there would be an exchange of bodies, and the start of implementation of a multi-year rehabilitation plan for Gaza, with Hamas barred from rebuilding its military infrastructure.

As ever, much of the devil is in the details, and many of those details are unclear. Would the IDF be able to prevent the return of Hamas to northern Gaza in the first phase of the deal, which would undo a key achievement of the war? Would the IDF be able to resume fighting after the first phase is completed, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the security echelons have said it must, in order to dismantle Hamas’s four battalions in Rafah? Is the talk of sustainable calm a euphemism for the end of the war?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (left) meets with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem, May 1, 2024. (Haim Zach/GPO)

While the far-right component of his coalition is warning him against the deal and threatening to deprive him of a governing majority, Netanyahu would appear to have the political numbers to approve it should he so desire. Among the ministers in the war cabinet, National Unity leader Benny Gantz has said the government must go ahead with a deal to secure the release of hostages provided it is not explicitly conditioned on the ending of the war — and the reported terms would seem to avoid that explicit conditioning. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant is believed to be of a similar mindset. And the prime minister would almost certainly be able to muster a majority in the full cabinet — the body that voted 35-3 to formally approve the weeklong hostage-truce deal in November.

Threats by the likes of Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to take their far-right parties out of the coalition need not be terminal for Netanyahu’s government. Opposition Leader Yair Lapid has repeatedly pledged to provide the Knesset votes to ensure the coalition is not brought down over this kind of hostage deal.

Netanyahu is entirely capable of presenting the terms as advancing, or at the very least not contradicting, all three of his declared goals for the war — the destruction of Hamas as a military and governing force, the return of the hostages, and the prevention of a fresh terrorist threat in postwar Gaza. He has insisted in recent days that the IDF will enter Rafah whether or not there is a deal, and would presumably continue to make that assertion.

For him to say no would be, rather absurdly, to reject terms his own negotiators could only have advanced with his and his war cabinet’s approval. It would defy the United States, and would put at risk the Biden administration’s ongoing support. But a no should not be ruled out, especially as Netanyahu, a serial breacher of political alliances, will have little faith in Lapid’s assurances of Knesset support, and no reason to believe that Yesh Atid’s backing would extend beyond the lifespan of the deal.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (R) meets with the families of the hostages held by Hamas, outside of a hotel, in Tel Aviv, on May 1, 2024. (Photo by Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

All of the above, however, depends on Hamas’s response to the terms.

Hamas’s Gaza chief Yahya Sinwar may determine that matters are playing out just fine without a deal: Most of Israel’s troops have long since withdrawn from Gaza.
There is immense international pressure on Israel not to launch a ground offensive in Rafah, where he may well be hiding, and he may believe that he and Hamas can survive the war, rearm and prepare for more and worse October 7 attacks. Israel is under assault across its northern border by Hezbollah. Iran is closing in on the bomb.

Substantial parts of the international community are increasingly intolerant of Israel’s right to self-defense; increasingly intolerant, indeed, of Israel, and, in fact, of Jews — a turn of global events that fully accords with Hamas’s avowed genocidal aspirations for the Jewish people

Substantial parts of the international community are increasingly intolerant of Israel’s right to self-defense; increasingly intolerant, indeed, of Israel, and, in fact, of Jews — a turn of global events that fully accords with Hamas’s avowed genocidal aspirations for the Jewish people.

Saying no, or raising objections, Sinwar may further conclude, will only heighten internal Israeli infighting — again, music to his ears.

On the other hand, the terms of the deal as published would appear to offer him and his much-depleted but still functional forces guaranteed survival in the short term, the opportunity to claim victory and, potentially, he may believe, the chance to rise and fight again.

Again, it should be stressed, the terms of the deal as widely reported are unconfirmed and unofficial.

IDF troops operate in the central Gaza corridor, in a handout image published May 1, 2024. (Israel Defense Forces)

The Biden administration’s interest in advancing the deal is clear: It wants to see the hostages released and a process for ending the war. It wants Hamas marginalized, Gaza calmed and rehabilitated, and Israelis able to live safely alongside the Strip. It believes a deal will also reduce the likelihood of escalation on the northern border, where tens of thousands of Israelis cannot return to their homes.

It seeks to bolster the alliance against Iran that contributed critically to thwarting almost all of Iran’s unprecedented missile and drone fire at Israel last month. It would hope to capitalize on the deal by chivvying Israel and Saudi Arabia toward normalization, in a process that will require Israel to moderate the government’s emphatic opposition to any substantive progress toward Palestinian statehood.

It wants to restore calm to university campuses, and reduce spiraling antisemitism. And it sees all of that helping to enable its own reelection.

Some of these are grand long-term goals, some of them highly improbable — certainly with this Israeli government. Doubtless, the administration would not be too unhappy were the Netanyahu coalition to fall en route, though it is anything but clear that a markedly more moderate Israeli leadership would succeed it.

Protesters block Begin Road in front of the Kirya IDF Military Headquarters in Tel Aviv, urging a deal for the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza, April 30, 2024 (Danor Aharon / Pro-Democracy Protest Movement)

But for now, the US, the mediators, Netanyahu and his government, the families of the hostages and the hostages themselves, await Hamas’s response to that “extraordinarily generous” Israeli offer.

Two hundred and eight days after it invaded Israel, slaughtered 1,200 people and abducted 253, it is a sickening reality that Hamas still holds the key to what is unfolding.

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