For Hebrew: https://www.jnvr.org/post/מדוע-לא-כל-החטופים-תמורת-כל-האסירים
In an article I saw in the Jerusalem Post, (October 28) It was said that Hamas may have expressed a willingness to free all Israeli hostages in exchange for all Palestinian jailed in Is
rael. The Israeli response was to discard this option out of hand.
It is only natural. Hamas is a murderous terror organization. It cannot and should not be trusted. However, I suspect that like in so many other things concerning this war, Israel is blind with rage (maybe a little bit of fear too?) and I doubt that any serious discussion has taken place regarding the possibility of such a trade.
Let’s assume that there are about 5000 Palestian prisoners, and that 2000 of them are actual murderers with Israeli blood on their hands. These numbers are not very accurate but for this kind of discussion, I think they’re serviceable.
Now let’s see why Israel shouldn’t accept such a deal?
Hamas slaughtered thousands of innocent Israelis. Accepting any type of gesture by it - cynical or authentic - will demolish our standing in the Middle East and will signal to all of our enemies that we are even weaker than they thought.
This is an insane number of terrorists who will go back to terrorism. Many of them were further indoctrinated in prison. We will be releasing the worst of the worst only to have them rejoin Hamas. We will double the number of their fighters.
This is a trap, Hamas has no intention of coming to a deal. We’d be making fools out of ourselves.
These are very good arguments, but do they truly represent a comprehensive set of considerations or maybe just the visceral need to fight and push back against an enemy that has not only hurt us, but also humiliated us?
We just had a bunch of under-trained and under equipped brats demolish our multi-billion defense systems, fool our multi-billion intelligence bodies and slaughter thousands of our citizens in broad daylight. I dare say that after that, our Middle East standing is pretty much done for. It is not the end of the line for us, but whatever deterrence we thought we had before, it is gone, and we will probably need to build a new, different one. Furthermore, all major threats to the state of Israel - mostly Iranian or Islamic, or both - have made it very clear that they are not afraid of us. Either we did something wrong along the way or maybe our enemies are immune to fear; it doesn’t matter. Over the last 20 years, it has been made abundantly clear that killing and demolishing sets them back a little bit, but does not crack their determination.
So, my conclusion is that concerning our show of strength, a hostage negotiation will merely be the desert in a very rich, very pricy meal we had already had.
The reluctance of setting a large number of terrorists on the loose, is understandable but I believe it lays at the convergence of several misconceptions. The first misconception is that Hamas, or Hizballah for that matter, are truly a military-level challenge for the state of Israel. That is simply not true. Both are terror organizations, capable of harassing Israel and causing much suffering but they are not, in any way, capable of beating Israel in any kind of a military confrontation. Period. The whole “we will win” campaign taking place right now in Israel is making this misconception even worse. We never lost, we will never lose - on the military front - to our current enemies. Write it down. Remember it when some hysterical journalist or politician tries to tell you otherwise. And so we come to the point: no number of terrorists on the loose will ever change the strategic balance between Israel and Hamas. Ever. These may be highly motivated, sometimes capable, fighters, but that is all they are. Foot - Soldiers in a ragtag army, that to begin with, never had any manpower issues. There are about 2 million people in the Gaza Strip, the vast majority of them are under 30 with no job or prospects. Let us assume that adding another 5000 people to this potential is not going to make a drastic change. And by the way, we don’t have to play fair. We want deterrence? Very well. Let us release those prisoners into the Gaza strip, and make sure that not even one of them survives this war. Not my personal style, but better than nothing.
This is, in all probability, a trap, a bait, a psychological trick. Hamas has learned over the years the enormous value of hostages and would never relinquish them so easily. They will probably use every trick in the book to stall, squeeze, threaten, and make media gains. Thing is, we don’t have to play along. We are going to war, having no assurances that the hostages will not be slaughtered. Why? Because we believe that is the right solution. Having a hostage negotiation - false or authentic - at the same time should not change our priorities. If Hamas tries to manipulate us through some false maneuvering, we simply stop the negotiation. But we do not refuse negotiation because we are afraid of being fooled or manipulated. We have declared a total war on Hamas. Let’s assume that some newspaper headlines or false statements will not be enough to change that.
And now for the real deal. Not a tit-for-tat argument, but something from the heart. My heart, and hopefully yours too.
We feel like this war is the end of the world because it coincided with the real end of the world. Our known Israeli world. We are that close to ending it, with or without Hamas’s help, and this is why everything feels so horrible. The war just brought us a step closer to the brink but that’s it. The rest is on us. We are not “losing” to Hamas or to Hizballah or to anybody else because they are so strong and terrible. We are “losing” because we are broken and lost. We have lost our trust in our leaders, in our state and most of all, in our fellow Israelis. We are resentful and mistrustful and the only kinds of fuel we have right now are hate and fear. On a daily basis we direct them at each other, but every once in a while we find the opportunity to unite and hate someone else, thinking that if we just beat them, everything will be alright. Negotiating for the hostages will not change that. Bringing them back - at any cost to our ego or even security - will not make any of our problems go away. But it might be the beginning of a pact, a new agreement between us: WE is first, WE is one, WE is all.
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