Netanyahu’s so-called ‘supreme effort’ for a hostage-ceasefire deal has been skewed, inadequate
Could Hamas’s latest act of barbarism, murdering six more of the hostages, have been prevented? Possibly. Could the PM and his government have done more to try to avert it? Yes
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).
In a video statement issued hours after the IDF announced it had recovered, from a tunnel in Gaza, the bodies of six hostages — six young women and men who were murdered just days ago by their Hamas captors — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation that his government has been conducting “intensive negotiations” in a “supreme effort” to reach a deal with Hamas to release all the hostages while ensuring Israel’s “security and existence.”
It agreed to a proposal in May that was backed by the United States, he recalled in a video statement. And when the US updated that framework last month, Israel agreed again. But Hamas refused both those offers and, he charged, “refuses to conduct real negotiations.”
“He who murders hostages does not want a deal,” Netanyahu summarized.
Only Hamas — and specifically Yahya Sinwar, the demonic architect of the October 7 slaughter and abductions — knows whether there were and are any terms for a deal, short of a full and irrevocable Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the internationally guaranteed permanent cessation of any action against it, that the terror group would accept.
But Israel’s “supreme effort” has not been unstinting; Netanyahu’s own defense minister and security chiefs have made clear for months — in numerous closed-door security consultations and sometimes publicly — their belief that the prime minister could and should have been more flexible in his efforts to draw Hamas into an agreement. Some of them have also credibly charged that the prime minister has been influenced by his own political considerations, amid warnings from his far-right partners that they would bring down his government if he cut what they consider to be a reckless deal.
Israel will have to battle Hamas for a long, long time to come, the security chiefs have argued. But time is running out for the hostages. And while the IDF has heavily degraded Hamas’s capabilities, the fact is that only eight hostages have been extricated alive from Gaza during almost 11 months of war. The weeklong truce last November, by contrast, saw the release of 105. Bringing home the maximal number of living hostages — from captors with reported standing orders from Hamas to kill them if they fear that Israeli troops are approaching — requires a deal.
On Thursday night, Netanyahu pushed through a vote at the key decision-making security cabinet endorsing maps drawn up at his request — and already conveyed by the mediators to Hamas — that provide for keeping IDF troops at the Philadelphi Corridor, the 14-kilometer route along the Gaza-Egypt border, during the first, six-week phase of the deadlocked potential deal.
Blindsided by the vote, a horrified Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to widely leaked transcripts of the meeting, argued that it risked torpedoing the deal and thus dooming the hostages. “The significance of this is that Hamas won’t agree to it, so there won’t be an agreement and there won’t be any hostages released,” Gallant reportedly told the ministers.
Netanyahu replied: “This is the decision.”
Gallant, though isolated in a forum dominated by Netanyahu loyalists along with the far-right ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, tried again: He reportedly told his ministerial colleagues that, if they approved the maps, they would be choosing to maintain the IDF’s deployment on the Philadelphi Corridor for six more weeks at the price of failing to bring home hostages. “Does this seem logical to you?” Gallant reportedly asked. “There are living (hostages) there!”
The cabinet endorsed the maps, by eight votes to one (Gallant’s).
In yet another back-and-forth, Gallant — who was temporarily fired from his defense minister post by Netanyahu in March 2023 and is plainly prepared to risk a repeat — reportedly asked the prime minister whether, with the lives of 30 hostages set to be freed in that first phase of the deal at stake, he nonetheless regards retaining control of the Philadelphi Corridor as the greater priority, even though the IDF is adamant that it can be swiftly retaken if needed.
Said Netanyahu: “I’m staying on the Philadelphi. Only resolute negotiations will force [Sinwar] to fold.”
In his brief video statement on Sunday, after the killings by Hamas of six hostages, four of whom — Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Almog Sarusi, Eden Yerushalmi, and Carmel Gat — were likely set to have been freed in the first phase of a deal — Netanyahu declared that Israel is “fighting on all fronts against a cruel enemy who wants to murder us all.”
That assessment is all too true. But this government and its leader have developed no strategy to meet the external challenge. And Netanyahu and many of his coalition colleagues are fueling domestic division — to the point where simple empathy for the hostages and their families is far from unanimous nationwide, and some on the far right depict them as unpatriotic architects of their plight. All this when internal cohesion is a vital, core component of Israel’s “security and existence.”
The Gaza war rumbles on. Hezbollah fires relentlessly across the northern border, where tens of thousands of Israelis cannot live in their homes. Iran is orchestrating attacks by the Houthis and other proxies, has directly attacked Israel itself, and is building up growing stocks of enriched uranium as it moves toward nuclear weapons. Terrorism in and from the West Bank is escalating — with recruitment made easier by extremist settler rampages and by Ben Gvir’s provocative encouragement of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, a spectacularly emotive issue that runs the risk of stoking hostility among Israel’s Arab citizens.
Again, there is no telling what Hamas would or could agree to. But a deal and even temporary ceasefire offers the potential for either the calming of the north or a redirection of Israel’s finite military resources to that front. Gallant and the US administration argue that it also offers the best chance of averting a full-scale regional conflict.
As the toll of hostages killed since October 7 mounts, the prime minister’s predictions of ‘total victory’ become ever more untenable, offensive, and disconnected from Israel’s reality
Most importantly, it would show Israel’s leadership prioritizing its fundamental obligation to redeem the hostages — many of them civilians, whom the state failed to protect on that terrible Shabbat morning. As things stand, as the toll of hostages killed since October 7 mounts, the prime minister’s predictions of “total victory” become ever more untenable, offensive, and disconnected from Israel’s reality.
“Our efforts to free the hostages continue all the time,” Netanyahu said in his video statement. But Thursday’s security cabinet meeting tells a rather different story. And Sunday’s terrible tidings show what is at stake — that every passing day brings the risk of more deaths that, just possibly, could have been avoided.
Could this latest act of Hamas barbarism have been prevented? Possibly. Could and should Netanyahu and his government have done more to try to avert it? Yes.
