The murder of the hostages may be a pivot point for a deal
A protester holds up a sign as they join a crowd gathered to demand a deal to bring home hostages from Gaza, Sept. 1, Tel Aviv, Israel. Photo by Amir Levy/Getty Images
Columnist Dan Perry September 1, 2024
The murder of six young Israelis held by Hamas has brought Israelis’ rage against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to a boil. With a national protest strike planned for Monday, there is mounting exasperation and impatience with what critics see as a cynical abandonment of the hostages aimed at enabling Netanyahu to cling to power amid epic calamity and failure.
So great is the anguish that Israeli news coverage in the wake of the murders of the hostages hardly focused at all on the murderers: the Palestinian jihadist group Hamas, whose Oct. 7 attack on Israel spawned a war that has to date killed perhaps 40,000 of its own people.
At the heart of recent events is Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel must retain at all costs military control of a slice of Gaza known as the Philadelphi Corridor, along the strip’s border with Egypt. That runs counter to Hamas’ demand that Israel withdraw entirely from the coastal enclave, something Israel seemed to accept several months ago, as part of the proposal announced by President Joe Biden.
Israelis now increasingly think that Netanyahu has reneged on withdrawal for two reasons: his self-serving (but effective) argument that political recriminations over the Oct. 7 debacle must be put aside during the fighting; and because the far-right parties that are key to his government have threatened to bring it down should he stop the war (they want, instead, to resettle Gaza with Jews).
Events of recent days could hardly have been scripted to more perfectly — and harrowingly — to bring matters to a head.
On Thursday, Netanyahu called a surprise cabinet vote that declared Israel would not abandon Philadelphi, thus delaying any hope of a ceasefire deal. Tellingly, the defense minister, Yoav Galant, opposed the move in what degenerated into a shouting match, arguing that Philadelphi was not important enough to Israel’s security to scuttle the talks. On Saturday night reports began to circulate that the military had found six bodies of hostages in a tunnel in southern Gaza. By Sunday morning the military identified the six, including the American-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose parents had addressed the Democratic Convention less than two weeks before. Israeli news outlets reported that the hostages had been shot, in the head and in the neck, between 48 and 72 hours prior to the discovery.
The shocking imagery – and the unprovable but compelling possible connection between the murders and the cabinet decision — unleashed a torrent of outrage that has been building up since the return to Israel about a week earlier of the bodies of six other hostages.
“You were sacrificed on the altar of the Philadelphi corridor!” the mother of Almog Sarusi, who was 27 and in the second group of bodies, wailed at his funeral. “You and so many other beautiful and pure souls. Enough! No more!”
Danny Elgert, brother of a hostage believed to still be alive in Gaza, accused Netanyahu of “having decided to kill the hostages” and caused a fuss by comparing on TV the Thursday decision to the 1942 Wannsee conference in which the Nazis decided to exterminate the Jewish people.
Arnon Bar-David, the head of the national labor federation Histadrut, announced a general strike on Monday that would include shutting down Ben Gurion International Airport. “A deal is more important than anything else,” he said. “Jews are being murdered in the tunnels of Gaza. It is impossible to grasp and has to stop.”
Noam Tibon, a retired general, argued on Channel 12 TV Sunday that Netanyahu’s position was undermining a foundational principle of trust between the state and its people, “and that’s why it is so unforgivable, and it will not stand.”
“The government of Israel is insisting on something that has no military logic to impede the hostage deal,” Tibon said, “and one understands that it’s political.”
On Sunday, Gallant called for the reversal of the Philadelphi decision. But Netanyahu argued that this would reward the murderers of the hostages. The cabinet reconvened and refused to change its position, despite a briefing from Israel’s negotiator, retired general Nitzan Alon, who said that the remaining hostages were in ever greater danger.
There is certainly some value in Israel keeping troops in the corridor. It is the dividing line between Gaza and Egypt, from where Hamas smuggled most of its weapons.
But it is not a panacea. Most of the smuggling was below ground in tunnels that neither originate nor culminate in the corridor itself. Military officials have also noted that any soldiers posted along the corridor would be very vulnerable, almost sitting ducks.
Capturing the corridor was not mentioned as a goal of the war until the spring — and keeping it has only recently surfaced as a demand. Returning the hostages and removing Hamas from power in Gaza were the original goals, and remain the priorities of the Israeli people.
And why is the much-weakened Hamas still in a position to return to power once Israel withdraws? Only because Netanyahu does not allow discussion of an alternative Palestinian leadership, despite tremendous pressure from the United States, the Arab world, and almost every non-governmental player in Israel.
The idea that Hamas can be pressured into giving up the hostages by heaping more destruction upon Gaza has been tested for almost a year. It probably won’t start working now in the little time that the remaining hostages probably have left.
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