A time-bomb deal: Negotiations with Hamas split Israel, causing an unprecedented crisis

Early in September, Hamas published a video showing the last words of six hostages, whose bodies Israeli soldiers had found in one of Gaza's tunnels on Aug. 31. The terrorist group announced that its fighters would exterminate other hostages at the approach of Israeli forces. These developments exacerbated an already intense debate in Israeli society. Protests demanding an immediate exchange are ongoing, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is being accused of sabotaging the deal out of personal political interests. In the first days following last year’s Oct. 7 attacks, the Jewish state appeared united in the face of a common threat and a common tragedy. But the clash of opinions since then has become so profound that neither the end of hostilities nor an upcoming election is likely to remedy the situation.

• 1.11 months of hell
• 2.A national tragedy
• 3.The schism
• 4.Hostages' lives or victory in Gaza?
• 5.With or without Netanyahu

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11 months of hell

“Answering the question ‘how are you?’ Yesterday we buried the brother of my 18-year-old daughter's friend. He was 24. ...On Oct. 7, 2023, he was at the festival. His arm was blown off by a grenade during a Hamas attack, and then he was taken to Gaza. Eleven months of hell. That ended a few days ago. He was shot and his corpse was planted so that it would be found by our soldiers. ...Five other hostages were killed along with him. One of them is the sister of a good friend of mine. A young, beautiful woman. I try not to know the details of her captivity, but I can imagine.”

Jerusalem resident Nadia Eisner wrote this on Facebook about the death of Hersch Goldberg-Polin, one of six slain Hamas hostages whose bodies Israeli soldiers discovered in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip on Aug. 31. As the IDF reported, the entrance to the tunnel was located in the children's room of an apartment building.

Goldberg-Polin had two passports — Israeli and American. The other dead hostage found that day, Alexander Lobanov, was an Israeli and Russian citizen. Soldiers also found the bodies of two Israeli women, Carmel Gat and Eden Yerushalmi, and two other Israeli men, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino.

Hamas hostages whose bodies were found on Aug. 31

The Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, was the bloodiest in Israel's history. More than 1,000 people, including Israelis and foreign nationals, were killed in one day. The terrorists took 251 hostages to the Gaza Strip. This led to a war between Israel and Hamas that has continued for almost 11 months. One of the declared goals of Israel's response operation was the return of the abductees.

Over the course of the war, 154 hostages were either freed or found dead. In late November 2023, 81 Israelis and 24 foreigners were released as part of the first deal with Hamas. Four more were released prior to that. Three were accidentally killed by IDF fire while trying to escape. Only eight have been rescued by Israel’s armed forces. Currently, 101 hostages remain in Gaza: 97 were taken on Oct. 7, and four have been held by Hamas since 2014. Among them are 84 men, 14 women, and two children under the age of five. Thirty-nine of the abductees are known to be dead.

A national tragedy

While this is not the first case of the Israel Defense Forces bringing home the bodies of hostages killed in the Gaza Strip, the news of six victims on Sep. 1 shocked Israelis. IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari said they were “brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists shortly before we reached them.” His words were later confirmed by forensic analysis, which determined the cause of death of the hostages to be bullet wounds to the head and other parts of the body. One of them was tied up before execution. The deaths occurred approximately 48 to 72 hours before the autopsy — on Aug. 29 or Aug. 30.

Three of the six, including Goldberg-Polin, are known to have been listed for an exchange that could have taken place if a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Hamas had been reached. Alexander Lobanov could have been freed as part of this exchange, as Russia had requested that the Hamas leadership approve his release. Lobanov's fate was discussed in late August during a secret visit to Moscow by Israel’s Military Secretary to the Prime Minister, Roman Gofman. But, as it turned out, while Gofman was negotiating, Alexander Lobanov was already dead.

Immediately after the retrieval of the six bodies, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “address the nation and take responsibility for the fact that the hostages were abandoned to their fate.” The statement asserts that, “Botching the deals resulted in their deaths.”

The forum has also pledged to halt all regular life in the country, calling on Israelis to take part in mass protests to pressure the government for an early deal with Hamas. In response, tens of thousands of supporters took to the streets. The General Federation of Labor in Israel (Histadrut) also joined the protests, announcing a general strike. The rallies continued, albeit on a smaller scale, but the strike itself was short, lasting only a few hours. The District Labor Court found the general strike to be political, not economic, and therefore ordered it to end.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum called on Israelis to take part in mass protests to pressure the government for an early deal with Hamas

The schism

Support for protests was far from unanimous, with many professional associations refusing to follow the Histadrut's call or else halting work for only a couple of hours, as happened at Ben Gurion Airport. The Tikva Forum, an alternative association organized by family members of hostages, did not support the strike either, advocating instead for pressure on Hamas and the international community rather than on the Israeli government. “This is a death sentence for the surviving abductees and a reward for [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar for killing six hostages. We call on the citizens of Israel to ignore the Histadrut strike, go to their workplaces, and prove to the world that the people of Israel are alive,” the Tikva Forum wrote.

While returning hostages remains the top priority for the Israeli public, opinions on how it should be done differ dramatically. The memory of the deal involving Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier kidnapped by Hamas in 2006 and exchanged five years later for more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners — most of them convicted terrorists — is still painfully fresh.

The exchange list included the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, who headed Hamas in the Gaza Strip in 2017 and was elected head of the overall movement's political office in August 2024.

Yahya Sinwar

Reuters

But it’s not only about Sinwar. Opponents of “a deal at any price” say that “October 7” will recur if Hamas pulls off yet another demonstration of the efficiency of its hostage-taking tactics. It is no coincidence that one of the most painful issues in the current negotiations between Israel and Hamas has been the list of Palestinian prisoners to be released in exchange for hostages.

Opponents of “a deal at any price” say that “October 7” will recur, as such a deal would only prove the efficiency of hostage-taking tactics

It was known as early as August that Sinwar insisted on the release of Marwan Barghouti, a Fatah movement leader, and Ahmed Sa’adat, the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among others. In 2004, an Israeli court sentenced Barghouti to five life terms on charges of killing five people through terrorist attacks. Sa’adat was sentenced to 30 years in 2008 for organizing the assassination of Israeli Tourism Minister Rehavam Ze’evi. Should these two figures be released, the level of outrage inside the Israeli public is not difficult to imagine.

Late last week, The Washington Post wrote that Hamas was toughening the terms of any potential exchange. From its initial demands that Palestinian prisoners with blood on their hands be released in exchange for IDF personnel, Hamas has moved on to demanding the swap of terrorists for civilians.

Another contentious issue is the return of forcibly displaced Palestinians to the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli Prime Minister is pushing for a checkpoint system in the Netzarim corridor, which divides the northern part of the Strip. Filtering at checkpoints is supposed to help separate militants from civilians. However, there is not much talk about it yet.

The fiercest public debate concerns control of the Philadelphi corridor — the border between the Gaza Strip and Egypt — and the Rafah crossing there. Israel unilaterally withdrew from the area (and the entire Gaza Strip) in 2005 and returned only as a result of fighting this past June. Netanyahu has dubbed the corridor the “oxygen of Hamas,” as the terrorists received weapons, supplies, and money through its underground tunnels (and partly through the border crossing itself).

Egypt claims to have destroyed or blocked all tunnels on its side years ago. Such an effort was indeed underway, but some of the tunnels may have been preserved, and new ones could have been built later. As for Rafah, both Arab and Western media have reported on smuggling through the crossing, often mentioning the complicity of Egyptian soldiers. And in all fairness, a significant share of the smuggled weapons and tunneling equipment that entered Gaza came from Israeli territory.

A significant share of smuggled weapons and tunneling equipment that entered Gaza came from Israeli territory

Hamas insists on a complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, including from the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and other Arab countries support this position, with Cairo pledging to strengthen controls on the corridor. The U.S. even is ready to support this effort. And yet, the search for options that will suit everyone continues. At this point, Israel is reportedly prepared to consider a withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor only in the second phase of any deal.

For now, Hamas is sparing no effort to place blame for the stalled negotiations — and its murder of Israeli hostages — on Israel's prime minister, accusing Netanyahu of stubbornness on issues like the problems surrounding the Philadelphi corridor. The debate is ongoing in Israel as well.

Hostages' lives or victory in Gaza?

In early July, it was reported that a deal could be reached within two to three weeks, and U.S. President Joe Biden even wrote that the framework of an agreement between Israel and Hamas had been agreed upon, even if much finalizing work remained to be done. But nothing worked out. Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman writes that the previously agreed upon draft treaty was substantially amended in late July at Netanyahu's insistence.

“This is an attempt by Benjamin Netanyahu to sabotage the chance that has arisen to reach an agreement. This document is drenched in the blood of the six abductees. And that's not counting other kinds of serious damage it could do to Israel and the entire region. The one thing it will absolutely not lead to — because it was designed specifically to prevent this outcome — is the release of the hostages,” Bergman wrote, citing a senior Israeli official privy to the talks.

According to Bergman’s source, it became clear in late July that Israel intended to stay in the Philadelphi corridor. The issue of control over the Rafah checkpoint and the Netzarim corridor also came up, and the combination of these items stalled the progress. Bergman points out, however, that it is not known how Hamas would have acted had Israel behaved differently.

At the same time, Israel Hayom quoted a senior non-Israeli source on Tuesday as saying: “We were never in a position when Hamas said ‘yes,’ but Israel needed persuasion.”

Even in the security apparatus and the government, there is no consensus on whether Israel should persist on the Philadelphi corridor matter. Even some members of Netanyahu’s Likud party disagree with the prime minister's position. The loudest voice on this issue is that of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who has called the decision to stay in the Philadelphi corridor a “moral disgrace.”

Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Yoav Gallant

“For decades, our soldiers have risked themselves to save one man. How can you now treat the lives of 30 people like that?” Gallant said in a security cabinet meeting convened immediately after the bodies of the six hostages were discovered. The 30 people Gallant is referring to are the hostages who were to be released in the first phase of the 42-day deal: women, children, elderly men, and those with critical health conditions. According to Gallant, the IDF could reoccupy the corridor in literally eight hours once the 20 to 30 hostages were released.

Centrist National Unity party head Benny Gantz, a former Defense Minister, along with fellow party member Gadi Eisenkot, a former IDF Chief of General Staff, share Gallant’s position. And as current Chief of the General Staff Herzi Halevi emphasizes: “Every hostage we bring back alive now will have many more years to live, and every terrorist will ultimately be eliminated.”

However, the position of Mossad director David Barnea is not entirely clear, as he has not spoken about it publicly. Some media outlets quote sources who say Barnea is privately accusing Netanyahu of dragging out the negotiations, while others report that he subscribes to the prime minister's motto: “Don't move an inch.”

The arguments presented by opponents of the deal boil down to a few key points. First and foremost, the “no deal” camp insists that there can be no more concessions to terrorists. They also emphasize the fact that the agreement under debate will not secure the release of all hostages, and that no one knows what will happen after the first stage of exchanges. Will there be a second stage involving the return of all the surviving male hostages? Might a third stage providing for the return of the bodies of murdered hostages come to pass? After all, the Hamas leadership is far from naive. It is not in their interest to release the hostages without securing guarantees of control over Gaza and a declaration of victory over Israel.

Critics of the Hamas deal emphasize that it will not lead to the release of all hostages

These concerns were voiced by former IDF Ground Forces Commander Yiftah Ron-Tal, who said: “I am very afraid that a partial deal imposes a death sentence on most of the abductees who will remain in the hands of Hamas. If there is a deal, Hamas will get what it wants, will keep the rest of the abductees, and will never return them to us.”

The Tikva Forum shared similar sentiments in a statement released on Sep. 1: “Abandoning strategic achievements such as the Philadelphi corridor means abandoning the rescue of the majority of hostages, who will not be released in the first phase. The corridor is critical to restoring security and putting pressure on Hamas.”

With or without Netanyahu

However, the most acute controversy in Israeli society surrounds the figure of the prime minister. The opposition accuses Netanyahu of allowing Hamas to gain a foothold in Gaza through years of inaction; they say he is intentionally derailing the present talks in pursuit of his own political survival. From the other side, the leaders of Israel’s extreme right-wing parties — Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir — are threatening to leave Netnayahu’s ruling coalition if a deal is struck. Such a move would automatically bring about the dissolution of the Knesset, and with it a snap election that would jeopardize Netanyahu’s hold on power.

Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir

Smotrich calls the treaty under consideration “Hamas's lifeline,” while Ben-Gvir emphasizes that continuing negotiations only encourages terror. This position is supported by the majority of their constituents. The latest polls suggest that the parties led by Ben-Gvir and Smotrich could get at least 10% of the popular vote in an election. However, many more are opposed to striking a deal with Hamas “at any price,” even if public opinion fluctuates continuously under the pressure of changing circumstances.

In early June, only 40% of Israelis polled by Kan 11 TV channel were in favor of the proposed hostage release deal. However, on Sep. 4, following the discovery of the six murdered hostages, the percentage of treaty supporters rose. Withdrawal from the Philadelphi corridor in return for the release of the hostages is supported by 53% of Israelis and opposed by just 29%. In addition, 54% believe that continuing the war in Gaza puts the lives of hostages at risk. Nineteen percent take the opposite position, and 27% hesitate to answer.

As early as 10 months before the war, the country split into two camps over the legal reforms promoted by the Netanyahu government. Many Israelis simply stopped talking to each other due to their political differences. The schism became slightly less pronounced in the days following Oct. 7, but the protests resumed mere months later. Protesters who before the war openly expressed their resistance to Netanyahu’s reforms moved on to demanding a deal to get the hostages back, but their core demand remains the same: a change of government. This political reality allows opponents of the deal to argue that the protesters have simply been using the hostage situation as a tool to topple Netanyahu. However, no one can guarantee that Benjamin Netanyahu will not be allowed to form a new government in the event of new elections, as he has demonstrated time and again his capacity to remain in power. And even if Netanyahu fails to become prime minister, it may not eliminate the conflict in Israeli society, as the contradictions and grievances fueling it are too numerous.

No one can guarantee that Benjamin Netanyahu will not be allowed to form a new government in the event of new elections

In short, the question of what to do about the Gaza Strip — and the Palestinian issue in general — will remain, no matter which coalition of parties holds sway in the Knesset. Very many Israelis still carry the trauma of the 1990s, when the process of establishing the Palestinian Authority, first in the Gaza Strip and then in the West Bank, morphed into a situation involving numerous terrorist attacks and culminating in the Second Intifada. The causes and consequences of these events have sparked endless debates between the right and the left, and at some point they will reappear on the agenda — with differences becoming even more fierce. Israeli society has taken a noticeable turn to the right since the 1990s, and the Oct. 7 attack exacerbated this trend. For now, the focus is around Netanyahu, but what will come after him?

Another important question for Israel is whether it will see a reshuffling of its political elites. Responsibility for October 7 rests, to varying degrees, with the country's military and political leadership. Who will resign, and who will stay? What kind of forces will end up in power? So far, there are no answers. The only feeling shared by a majority of Israelis seems to be that, for whatever reason, the country is plunging into an abyss. No consensus exists — neither around the contours of a viable “Hamas deal” option, nor around the possibility of rescuing all of the remaining hostages. Under the circumstances, the only guarantee seems to be the continuation of Israel as a divided, distrustful society surrounded by a plethora of hostile neighbors.

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