What to expect “the next day”?

Israel agreed to an agreement with Hamas for the sake of its hostages. What he has to sacrifice, explains Israeli expert, Professor Zeev Hanin

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The Israeli government has approved a ceasefire deal with Hamas. The regime will take effect on Sunday, January 19. On this day, the first Israeli hostages should return home; they will be met by relatives, doctors and psychologists. The first phase of the deal will last 42 days. At this stage, 33 hostages should be released: women, children, seriously ill people and men over fifty. How many of them are alive and how many are not is unknown. An additional 61 hostages - young men and IDF fighters - are expected to be released in the second and third stages. In exchange, Israel will release from prison more than one and a half thousand Palestinians convicted of involvement in terrorism. Among them, 200 are those who were sentenced to multiple life sentences for the murders of Israeli citizens.

Under the terms of the deal, Israel provides Gaza with humanitarian aid, and refugees who fled during the war are returning to the north of the strip. True, it is not clear where they are returning: their houses have been destroyed. What they will take with them to Gaza can only be guessed at; they will have to go through the process; the process will be controlled by representatives of Egypt and Qatar; Israel will not be able to intervene in it. At the last stage, the IDF will completely withdraw from the sector. But, we repeat, 94 hostages will return home. Or their relatives will receive their bodies, because it is still unknown how many hostages are alive.

What a deal with terrorists means for Israel, victory or defeat, explains Ze'ev Hanin, a professor in the department of political science and director of the post-Soviet conflict studies program at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University.

— When the agreement between Israel and Hamas was just reached, it was celebrated both in Arab countries and in Jerusalem. What is this for Israel?

— Imagine that two opponents are involved in the same process, each wants to win, but one is playing chess, and the other is playing tug of war. Who can win or lose in such a situation?

If all this is discussed from the point of view of conflicts between conditional European countries, then the situation is like this: Israel destroyed half of Gaza, destroyed the organized military infrastructure of Hamas, eliminated almost the entire military leadership and most of the political leadership of Hamas, and ultimately returned its hostages. This would be called a clear, unconditional victory for Israel and a defeat for Hamas.

From Hamas's point of view: they attacked Israel, they fired rockets at it for a year, they took 250 people hostage, about a third of whom died in captivity.

And ultimately, they signed an agreement when, in exchange for the survivors and the dead, they received more than a thousand terrorists, among whom about 200 had blood on their hands.

And they remained in power in Gaza. And now they will also receive gigantic humanitarian aid, which they themselves will distribute. At the same time, several thousand people died on their side. Or several tens of thousands, exactly how many is unknown, with a high probability there were significantly more terrorist militants among them than in the structure of losses of the local population during other wars. In Gaza, almost the entire population is integrated into the Hamas infrastructure.

“It seems that Hamas is not very worried about how many people it has killed.

“For them, these are completely legitimate sacrifices on the altar of a great goal - global jihad and the destruction of the Zionists. So from their point of view, this is a clear victory. And look who's celebrating what. Israel celebrates the return of the hostages. Hamas celebrates victory over Israel.

— The Middle East has its own ideas about victories. Egypt still celebrates the victory in the Yom Kippur War. Surely Israel understood that this would happen, that Hamas would declare anything its victory?

- Absolutely true. The fact that they are alive, remain in power, exist is already a victory for them. And what kind of losses they suffered - this is not a trifle worth noting.

— The most difficult question here is what next? What does it mean for Israel that Hamas is still alive, in power and in existence?

“The question of what will happen the next day is a topic on which there is no consensus in Israel. So I'll take a step back: Should Israel have agreed to this deal in the first place? The deal has its critics. There are critics on the right who believe that the problem is the very fact that Hamas has not been completely destroyed, that de facto it will have to be dealt with. All the talk is that this can be transferred to the Palestinian Authority, some external forces like the Saudis or Qatar (by the way, a close ally of Iran and Turkey’s partner) can be called upon...

- ...Qatar, which actually also finances Hamas a little.

— “It finances a little” is a very mild word. De facto, the Qataris have never been honest brokers; in fact, they have always worked for radical Islamists. Now Iran has weakened, but the niches left by it will clearly be occupied not by democratic regimes at all, but by such as, for example, Turkey, where the local version of the same “Muslim Brotherhood” is in power. Transferring Gaza to the control of this public also means de facto working with the same Hamas.

The alternative is that Israel remains in Gaza and effectively controls the strip. But this was possible before the unilateral disengagement from the sector carried out by Ariel Sharon in 2005, and today it is hardly realistic.

And the vast majority of Israelis will not agree to this. And what will happen the next day? As we can see, nothing particularly good.

However, “the next day” is not the only important issue. No less, and perhaps more important, is what will happen in two days, in two years, in three years. We will get a renewed and strengthened Hamas there. Just as it was with Hezbollah: it suffered heavy losses in 2006, during the Second Lebanon War, but since then, relatively speaking, until October 8, 2023, it has tripled or quadrupled its military potential and finally taken control of Lebanon . So the question arises: will we have to return to Gaza to conduct military operations there again?

“Critics of the deal on the right say that Israel will begin military action as soon as it receives the hostages back.

— These are fantasies and manipulations of public opinion. Everyone understands perfectly well that this is the end of the war. This is what US President Joseph Biden spoke about a year ago, but then Benjamin Netanyahu’s position was such that he alone could resist American pressure. Trump came and said exactly the same thing - and Bibi unconditionally signed everything.

— In the spring of 2024, the deal was announced on almost the same terms on which it is concluded now. Do you think that in the end it was the Trump factor that played a role now?

- Only him. And nothing more. No other factors played a role here.

— Since then, the number of hostages who remain alive...

- Absolutely right. And the soldiers who died during these months. Critics of the deal also have questions about this. Some of them criticize the very idea that we enter into an agreement with terrorists who ultimately remain in their places in Gaza. That is

Hamas as a phenomenon has not been destroyed, although the organization has suffered severe military damage; militarily, Hamas has been defeated.

An organized corps with its own military-industrial complex, its own reconnaissance, missile teams, “general staff”, ammunition depots, ranked brigades, logistics services and other things - Hamas no longer has all this, but there are still cells waging guerrilla warfare.

— Under the terms of the deal, should Israeli troops withdraw from the Philadelphia Corridor?

- This condition is recorded there. The Prime Minister’s Office denies this, but this is already one of the popular jokes in Israel: exactly what “the Prime Minister’s Office denies” is exactly what happens.

— The departure of the IDF from Philadelphia is a 100% guarantee that Hamas will quickly recover with Qatari money.

- To Qatari, Turkish, and at the same time, to the money of well-wishers from Western countries, who will again begin to donate to the unfortunate residents of Gaza. Only the residents of Gaza will not get anything from this - the money will be immediately converted into weapons, because Hamas will control the humanitarian aid, resell it at exorbitant prices, and then use this money to arm military units.

— The IDF, under the terms of the deal, leaves the Netzarim corridor, which runs across the sector from the Israeli border to the Mediterranean Sea. But how did Jerusalem agree to the army leaving Philadelphia?

— It is assumed that the army will leave the Philadelphia corridor within 50 days. There are those in the government who promise that we will return there later, but the chances of this are, to put it mildly, slim.

— On Sunday, January 19, Hamas should release the first group of hostages. But it is still unknown how many hostages are alive and how many bodies the terrorists will return. What do we even know about how many people will return alive?

“They don’t tell us this, but, as they say, “according to the foreign press,” 22 people are alive and 11 are dead.

- And the “saffron milk caps” - Kfir and Ariel Bibas?

— There are no more “saffron milk caps.”

- No?!

- They died.

- Is this already known?

- This was never officially announced. There was a Hamas fake that the “saffron milk caps” and their mother Shiri died as a result of Israeli shelling. You can believe this in exactly the same way as all other data from Hamas. But it seems that the babies really died, they died from unbearable conditions. If they return alive, it will be the biggest celebration in Israel. But what condition can such small children be in after one and a half years in unbearable conditions?

“Israel must release more than one and a half thousand Hamas terrorists from its prisons, of which 200 are with blood on their hands, sentenced to several life sentences for murders...

“And critics of the deal also talk about this, believing that these terrorists will immediately fill the vacant positions in the military and political leadership of the group.

— Why did Israel agree to this condition?

- Because it was Hamas's condition.

Now Bibi has signed everything that was required to be signed. Compared to the parameters of the deal announced last March, Hamas has not taken a step back. Nothing has changed since then.

“Nevertheless, among those released from Israeli prisons will not be Abdullah Barghouti, who was sentenced to 67 life sentences, and Hamas demanded him too.

“Neither the release of Hamas member Abdullah Barghouti, nor the release from prison of the commander of the terrorist military wing of Arafat’s Fatah, Marwan Barghouti, sentenced to five life sentences for killing Israelis, was initially expected.

“In addition, Israel will not return the body of Yahya Sinwar to Gaza, that is, it will not allow his memorial to be built in Gaza.

“Believe me, in any case, all of Gaza will be one big memorial to Sinvar.” With all the rallies, dances, fireworks and distribution of candy.

“Under the terms of the deal, all released terrorists will have to go to Turkey and Qatar. How can Israel control that they will not immediately return to Gaza, enter through Philadelphia, or crawl through new tunnels?

- This will be controlled. Everything will depend on the actions of the political and military leadership of Israel. Former Deputy Chief of the General Staff and Secretary of the Security Council Uzi Dayan in an interview recalled an episode in the first term of Benjamin Netanyahu, in 1998, when Yasser Arafat bucked and there was an armed clash between the Palestinian police, recruited from PLO militants, and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces. This was the first signal that Arafat did not have a final peace settlement in mind. By the way, Uzi Dayan is the nephew of Moshe Dayan ( Israeli Minister of Defense during the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War. - I. T. ). So he said that then it was possible to record everyone who shot not only at IDF soldiers, but even in the air. And he hinted that if someone later wanted to meet with these PLO fighters, he would not be able to do so, because it is impossible.

“Israel’s abilities in this sense are known. But did those who were released as part of the deal for the release of IDF sergeant Gilad Shalit in 2011 manage to live until October 7, 2023 and return to Israel?

“I knew that you would ask this question, so I found out in advance from my colleagues how many of them were still alive.” Exact data has not been published, but, according to some estimates, a third of those released in 2011 are already in the afterlife or have returned to Israeli prisons. The rest are at large, although for the most part these are not figures of the highest caliber. Although a significant part of them probably took part in the fighting in Gaza after October 7. With consequences that are clear to many of them. In any case, not everyone made it to 2023. Terrorists who exit through an exchange deal sign a declaration that they will not return to terror.

-Are you serious?

“The vast majority of these more than one and a half thousand people are small fry who are of no interest to anyone. One foreign publication recently contacted me, and they said about those whom Israel is releasing from prison that they are “activists and members of the organization.”

- Oh, “activists”...

— Calling them terrorists and bandits is apparently politically incorrect. But most of these “activists and members of the organization” are really of no interest to anyone; they are, at most, “cannon fodder.”

“But the two hundred with life sentences are interesting.” Two hundred is quite a lot.

— Yes, there are two hundred “high-level” terrorists, those who can be called ideologists and commanders, who are in one way or another involved in the decision-making process. They are released on the basis of a presidential pardon. But this pardon is conditional. If they violate the signed declaration, they become a legitimate target for liquidation. On the other hand, Sinwar also signed such a declaration when he came out in 2011.

- That's it.

“This does not mean that Sinvar could not have been eliminated all this time. There was simply no political solution. Everyone knew perfectly well where he was, but it was believed that it was possible, so to speak, to coexist with Hamas. This doctrine exploded on October 7, 2023, and now there is no return to it.

“ One of the terms of the deal is the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees to northern Gaza. They will control what they carry there with them using special devices, but the devices must be controlled by representatives of Egypt and Qatar. Do Israel believe that control by Egypt and Qatar is a sufficient condition for security?

- They don’t think so. But there is no way out. This deal is either done or it's not. It exists exactly on the terms that were formulated in rough form in January 2024, and the main parameters were presented to Biden in March-April. And then Netanyahu abandoned it. The current deal is exactly the same. I repeat, Hamas did not make a single millimeter of concessions; all concessions were made by Israel. And what you are asking about is one of these concessions.

— It was not even possible to negotiate for Israel to control what the refugees bring with them to Gaza?

- They probably tried to do this. But this could have been negotiated six months ago. Now Mr. Trump has actually put his friend Netanyahu before a choice: either we are friends or not, or you sign or not. At one time, when Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat signed the agreement, the latter balked at the last moment.

Then the late Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak called Arafat and told him: sign, son of a bitch, otherwise you know what will happen. And he signed. And now, apparently, they spoke to Bibi, although not in the same tone, but quite convincingly.

There is another story in connection with this. When the IDF cleared the next suburbs in the north of Gaza, 15 of our soldiers died in a week. Because everything there is mined. Mines can be neutralized, but there are modern ways to control them using CCTV cameras. And it turned out that the Hamas “partisans” received these modern devices in bales with humanitarian aid. And no one found it. By and large, no one was looking. And this is what we can also get when “humanitarian aid” goes to Gaza.

“In particular, Israel itself undertakes to supply humanitarian aid to Gaza as part of the deal. What kind of condition is this, when humanitarian aid needs to be supplied to a military enemy? How to wrap your head around this?

“None of the normal people can wrap their heads around this.” But this is how the system of relations between progressive humanity and the Jewish state is built.

— What will the buffer zone between Israel and Gaza ultimately be like? Israel demanded that it be a kilometer, Hamas insisted on 200 meters.

— In the end it will be 700 meters. And I can’t say that this is a great achievement for us. Even if Israel controls one square centimeter of Gaza, it will remain for the world community a state that occupies this territory.

-And this is still, even after the reaction of the “world community” on October 7, an argument for Israel?

- Not anymore, Israel is still "occupier." This is another argument for critics of the transaction. Among them, for example, the deputy of the Knesset and the former Minister of Defense of Israel Avigdor Liberman. He believes that it was necessary to change everyone at all and in one stage, and not stretch on three or four, as it is now. Because at any stage, Hamas can blow up a deal if it suddenly seems profitable to him or if he finds support from a new partner. Trump, of course, has a long tooth for Iran, but with the Turks he still clearly wants to cooperate. By the way, not everything is unambiguous with Iran. In the current transaction, it is not clear how Israel will control the process already at the second stage of the transaction, especially in the third, all hostages or only 33 people at the first stage will return.

Further, as the supporters of this point of view say, Israel must make every effort in order to pull all his own from Hamas, and then stop all connection with the gas sector. That is, to achieve direct recognition that Israel is no longer responsible for this territory. No way. This should be, as Professor Preobrazhensky said, "the final piece of paper, actual, real." So that Israel can maintain freedom of action in gas if all these gangs move there so that it can return to the concept of point liquidations or even expanded anti -terrorism operations, but at the same time did not supply a drop of water, or kilowatt of electricity, nor Cubeter of gas, nothing at all.

Responsibility for life in Gaza should be borne by all the goodness that the crocodiles of tears are now pouring and require the existence of the local population. Want to them good? Let them go to you. Do not want to let me go? Take them in place.

- Do you believe that this is possible? Believe that Israel in the future can relieve any responsibility for providing Gaza?

- The question is what we want to get in the end. We want to occupy gas, return Jewish settlements there? This is one doctrine. We want to return the status quo, as it was before October 7? This is the second doctrine. Do we want to completely part with the gas sector so that it is a territory controlled by one or another external forces? This is the third doctrine. You can achieve anything, here the question, as they say, is the ratio of price and quality.

-More precisely, the question of what you get at your side in a couple of years?

- Absolutely right. Now Trump is returning to the Middle East clearly with his “deal of the century” - the one that he did not manage to realize in his first cadence. If we want to get the third option, it must be introduced as a condition in an agreement with Saudi Arabia as part of the normalization of the relations of Jerusalem and Riyadh. Saudis will be forced to take this position in one way or another. Now it is clear that Trump is ready for a lot in order for normalization to take place. Does he aim at the Nobel Prize of the World? This guy has already shown that he says seriously that he is not a freak at all.

Now Trump and Biden are bickering about who will hang on his chest the Order for the cessation of the war in gas and the return of hostages. Bayden believes that he organized everything, and Trump only cut the ribbon. Indeed, on January 19, the president is still Biden, although this is the last day of his powers. On the other hand, Trump said that the war in gas would end even before he enters the oval office, and he receives it.

- Here the order on the chest should be hung by Trump political technologists.

- That's right. But in principle, the transfer of power to the United States is very smooth, which was formed at the Bush Jr. Concept ABC, Anything But Clinton (“Anything, not Clinton”), which sounded like ANYTHING BUT OBAMA under the former Trump, now seems to be not valid . Now everything looks so that the foreign policy doctrine of Trump is not yet radical from Biden's doctrine, except in details.

By the way, this is one of the explanations why the Israeli leadership signed an agreement with Hamas, which was not ready to sign under any circumstances before. This could bring down the right flank of the coalition in the government, where there are still opponents of transactions that would like to torpedo it. Supporters of the Prime Minister (we are lovingly called the Bibisians) changed in the air and now explain why the deal is so good. More recently, they said that everyone who insists on such a deal, traitors and agents Hamas. Now the Bibists are sitting in television studios with mysterious persons and assure that we all just do not understand what dividends will receive Israel from the transaction.

- And what are these dividends?

- It is believed that in return Israel will receive the guarantees of the Americans to the forceful solution of the Iranian problem. I don’t know if this fantasies or behind it costs something real.

- What will be the fate of Muhammad Sinvara, the youngest of the brothers, who is still alive and actually refuel in gas?

- So far it will be alive. Until it starts to initiate terrorist sorties.

“And you think that he will live for a long time?”

- The question is what guarantees he received. Well, we walk under God. See what is happening in Lebanon. Israel gave the Hezbollah to the figures of certain guarantees, they violate them, and suddenly something explodes from them ... It is clear that the physical presence of the Israeli defense army is necessary in the gas, but in what form, this is not very clear.

- You yourself said that it is not known how the second and other stages of the transaction will go. But if we proceed from the formal conditions that have been known since last spring, what should happen? What is expected in Israel?

- It is assumed that at the first stage 33 people will be released: children, all women, wounded and people over fifty. At the second and third, first young men will be released - not the military, then - the fighters of the Israeli defense army. And in exchange for 94 people, we will release more than one and a half thousand terrorists. Ask me: is it worth the salvation of hostages of the liberation of terrorists? What is more important for Israel: so that the terrorists stay in prisons or that our citizens are released? The answer of the vast majority of the Israelis is understandable.

* The Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation is included in the register of "foreign agents".