Starting tomorrow, 30 children are expected to return to their families from the hands of Hamas terrorists. Will twelve-year-old Eitan be there? And what is the national security price that Israel is paying for the hostages?
For 47 days, on the Sabbath at 5:30 a.m., Batsheva Yahalomi Cohen has been fighting for the life of Eitan, twelve years old. She tried to calm her three children for hours while shots rang out outside, shouts of “Allahu Akbar” and smoke from the burning kibbutz seeped through the cracks. When the terrorists finally broke down the door, pointing a gun at her and shouting, “Come, come,” she left. With Eitan and his sister, holding the baby. Past the bleeding father who said he loved them and that they should obey the terrorists. Batsheva knew what awaited the four. Hostages are gold for Hamas, always have been. “Take me, not the kids,” she pleaded, but there was no chance.
The fact that the mother has since then repeatedly told her story in TV studios, on podiums in Israel, abroad and even in Berlin – in freedom and alive – is thanks to a motorcycle accident. The terrorist’s plane slipped as he drove Batsheva and her two girls towards Gaza. The mother saw the other motorcycle, with Eitan on the back, disappear across the border. Ohad, her husband, is also believed to have been abducted. No sign of life from either of them for 47 days. And now the deal. Eight mothers, twelve old people, 30 children.
Bodies are still being autopsied
It cannot be said with certainty whether these are all the kidnapped children and whether this deal will at least get the children back from the hands of their tormentors. Autopsies of remains are still ongoing. Some who were initially considered hostages are identified as dead. Others who were initially thought to be dead may have been abducted.
It’s not just Batsheva fighting for Eitan’s life and everyone else’s. Since October 7th, it seems as if the entire country is shouting, “bring them home.” Israel was plastered with photos of the hostages on its facades, thousands marched over days from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Relatives of the abductees met with Qatari negotiators themselves and beyond the government. That’s how great the distrust is, how little the Israelis believe in the promises of their head of government.
It is a coalition in which a prime minister who is suspected of corruption makes a pact with right-wing radicals. Benjamin Netanyahu currently has the trust of four percent of the population. This is what the latest survey showed. 76 percent of those surveyed wanted him to resign immediately. The gap between “Bibi’s” right-wing government and the Israelis is so great that even a minister musing on the radio about the possibility of dropping a nuclear bomb on Gaza can hardly do any harm.
In order not to have to rely on the ultra-right, the prime minister has formed an emergency government with the opposition. This secured him a clear majority for the hostage deal, against the wishes of the right-wing Minister for National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir.
“Initially, Netanyahu didn’t even want to meet with the families of the hostages,” says Anita Haviv, who works in Israel on behalf of the Federal Agency for Civic Education. But the security forces also supported an agreement. “Netanyahu would never have gotten away with rejecting this deal,” Haviv said. She sees the prime minister as someone who can easily be put under pressure. “In this case, an incredible amount of pressure was applied.”
Maybe a first, cautious sigh of relief
So now the first ten hostages are to be released tomorrow in return for a ceasefire and the release of imprisoned Palestinians. Perhaps the return of these ten, the images of people hugging each other after weeks of unbearable fear, could allow the battered country to breathe a cautious first sigh of relief. The concern for the remaining abductees is too great for anything more and the price that Israel is paying is too high. “Solidarity with the hostage families is unrestricted; a ‘no’ to this deal would not have been an option. But the country is also making itself enormously vulnerable,” says Haviv. “Perhaps we are acting against all reason.”
On the political level, there are valid arguments against an agreement with the terrorists, just the encouragement of a successful agreement for possible imitators. The two components of Israel’s quid pro quo have implications for the country’s security. Almost 300 imprisoned Palestinians, mostly young people, are released.
“Since they are still young, they will not yet take on any direct leadership roles in Hamas or Islamic Jihad,” is the assessment of Israel expert and author Richard C. Schneider. “But the radicalization had already begun beforehand, otherwise they wouldn’t have been imprisoned at all. And it will have progressed further through Muslim clergy in prison; such developments are also known from prisons in Europe and the USA.”
Recent history proves Schneider right: in 2011, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the life of soldier Gilad Schalit, who had been held captive for five years. One of them was Jahia Sinwar, released after 23 years in Israeli custody. Sinwar is now the head of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He is considered largely responsible for the massacre on October 7th.
Officials say that the young prisoners who are now being released have “no blood on their hands yet.” But Schneider believes it is very likely that Israel will release the next generation of Islamists, possibly terrorists, in the coming days.
This makes it all the more important for Israel not to be deterred from its war goal of completely destroying Hamas’ military apparatus. The structures in which violent Palestinians previously received training and equipment should no longer exist. On this path to the end of Hamas as a terrorist power, the agreement that has now been concluded represents a setback; the momentum on Israel’s side will be lost. But the armed forces are confident that they can deal with it.
“Hamas has completely lost northern Gaza”
Because militarily, the Israeli counterattack is going much better than initially expected. The army had expected many of its own losses, but complained of significantly fewer casualties and made faster progress. “New technologies and strategies have been developed that are obviously working, so that on the one hand Hamas has actually completely lost northern Gaza and on the other hand it has also lost many very important figures within its command structure,” says Schneider. For Hamas, the ceasefire is very urgent as a breather.
In addition to the break, the terrorist group expects the hostage deal to also have concrete benefits for another problem, because the terrorists have overshot their own goal with their public representation of the massacre: “The brutal images that Hamas deliberately produces with its GoPros to terrify Israelis and the world have put them on a par with the Islamic State.” After initial cheers, many Palestinians turned away in the face of the brutality. Arab Israelis also often showed solidarity with their Jewish fellow citizens. Iran and Hezbollah are supporting Hamas far less than hoped. “Hamas is often equated with IS. They want to get away from this image by releasing hostages.”
What is good for Hamas is bad for Israel. It can be summed up so simply. But above all this calculation is people’s compassion for those who are innocent victims of terror. Tomorrow some of them could return home, and perhaps Eitan Cohen will be among them. His mother Batsheva doesn’t know yet. The authorities did not inform the families; the terrorists’ promises were too fragile. You don’t want to raise hope that could be disappointed all the worse.