KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Israeli soldiers’ discovery of six of their country’s hostages shot dead in a tunnel underneath Rafah, Gaza has placed the question of a cease-fire’s prospects in stark relief. Coming as the U.S. had already stepped up efforts to push for an Israel-Hamas agreement, the grim fate of the hostages can simultaneously be viewed as providing a catalyst for the urgent conclusion of a deal, or as a harbinger of diplomatic derailment for a process the U.S., Egypt and Qatar had been in the throes of pushing to resolution.
USIP’s Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen discusses the potential political and diplomatic implications of the murdered hostages, and where Israel, Hamas and the United States may go from here.
Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: Israeli authorities assess that the six victims were assassinated at close range by their captors 24-48 hours before their soldiers came across them in a tunnel in Rafah. The U.S. corroborates this conclusion. The recovery site was within the same tunnel network and not far from where a different Israeli hostage, Farhan Al-Qadi, had been found alive and seemingly abandoned by his captors a few days earlier. Distinct from earlier above-ground hostage rescue and recovery operations, neither case involved a firefight nor was conducted on specific indicative intelligence. Rather, it appears that Israeli forces are closing in on areas within the expansive Hamas-built tunnel network where hostages are being held.
The dynamics of these circumstances are pushing in diametrically opposed directions within Israel. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “whoever murders hostages — does not want a deal,” and vowed to “hunt down … catch … and settle the score” with Hamas leaders. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right member of Netanyahu’s coalition, has vowed to do everything he can to “prevent a reckless [cease-fire] deal.”
At the same time, Netanyahu and his government are facing an outpouring of public and political opposition within Israel, underscoring the stark divides in the country over how to proceed with the war and pursuit of a cease-fire. Other cabinet members, the opposition and the largest group of the hostage’s family members are leveling counter accusations of recklessness at the government, accusing their leaders of abandoning the hostages in favor of personal political interest and unrealistic goals of “total victory” over Hamas.
Just two days prior to the announced murder in captivity of Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Alexander Lobanov, Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino, Israel’s security cabinet had voted to support the prime minister’s insistence on Israel maintaining an indefinite security presence on the border area between Gaza and Egypt known as the Philadelphi Corridor. This new demand, which Netanyahu raised last month, was serving as a key impediment to reaching a cease-fire agreement and had received pushback from both the U.S. and Egypt, who serve as mediators in the talks.
Israel’s own defense minister, Yoav Gallant, had voiced strong disagreement with the cabinet vote last week, representing the perspective of senior military officers by casting a lone vote against the position, and reportedly slamming the vote as effectively tantamount to a decision to “kill all the hostages.” As Gallant has now called on the security cabinet to reverse its vote in an effort to save the remaining living hostages, the prime minister and other members of the government have doubled down on their position, expressing the view that to move toward a deal now would be a surrender to Hamas’ terrorism, and compromise Israel’s security.
As the political back and forth plays out as against the backdrop of hostages’ funerals, hundreds of thousands of Israelis poured into the streets on Monday to protest what they deem insufficient action by their government to secure the release of the hostages. Supported by former prime minister and current opposition leader Yair Lapid, the country’s largest labor union also called a massive nation-wide strike to push for a cease-fire deal to bring the hostages home. Until the country’s Labor Court ordered an end to the action later in the day, the work stoppage temporarily shut down operations at the country’s main airport, other transportation services, as well as activity at some health, educational, banking and commercial and municipal institutions. The disparate willingness of different localities to participate underscored the national divides over the desired course of action in relation to the war.
The battle in Israel’s national psyche is now between competing pressures to save the hostages … and Netanyahu’s expressed concern that caving and offering concessions to Hamas … would further endanger Israel’s security.
The battle in Israel’s national psyche is now between the competing pressures to save the lives of those 64 hostages who their government has estimated may still be alive in Gaza — seen as a race against the clock — and Netanyahu’s expressed concern that caving and offering concessions to Hamas in the wake of their murdering the six hostages would only reward and embolden the movement and further endanger Israel’s security. The complexity surrounding Israeli public attitudes on this question — while a majority consistently support a deal that sees the return of all hostages — is manifest in the polling trends in Israeli society and doesn’t point clearly to a conclusive policy direction, to the extent the leadership is following such a lead. On Monday, the prime minister responded to the protests affirming that he would continue to hold to his demand of remaining in control of the Philadelphi Corridor, and that “no one will preach to me.”
Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: As noted, just last week, Israeli soldiers rescued one living hostage, who was presumed to have been abandoned by his Hamas captors when the latter sensed Israel was zeroing in on their location. Assessing that Israel is getting closer to where the hostages are located, it is likely that Hamas political leader Yahya Sinwar is looking to enhance deterrence and retain leverage in cease-fire talks by ordering execution of the hostages to prevent additional successful rescue operations and thereby removal of Hamas’ bargaining chips. It is notable that three of the six slaughtered hostages were slated to be released in the first phase of the cease-fire proposal reported to be most recently on the table. In this context, Sinwar is no doubt watching the domestic debate and roil in Israel with an interested eye to whether and how it will impact the Israeli government’s positions at the cease-fire negotiations.
In the meantime, with focus on the narrative battle, a Hamas spokesman issued a statement blaming Israel and the U.S. for the continuation of the war and the hostages’ deaths. Hamas has insisted on nothing less than full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in the context of a cease-fire agreement, as the latest Israeli position has insisted on retaining military control of both the Philadelphi Corridor and the Netzarim Corridor that divides Gaza’s north and south. In both cases, Israel says sustained control is vital to ensuring that Hamas can’t rearm, and that its fighters can’t readily return to the north of the enclave in the wake of a cease-fire.
Where Gazan public opinion is, and therefore internal pressure on the Hamas leadership, is not as readily discernable, actionable or arguably dispositive in authoritarian-led and war-decimated Gaza as it is in Israel. The vast majority of the population is in daily survival mode amid acute food insecurity and public health challenges, with the outbreak of polio having recently led to Israel agreeing to humanitarian pauses in the fighting to allow for the administration of vaccines. Polls over the last several months of war have painted a variable picture, though across the board suggest that support for Hamas has been declining in Gaza as the war wears on. There have been increasing instances of Gazans publicly willing to voice anger and frustration with Hamas’ role in the death, destruction and ongoing suffering in Gaza, a phenomenon once shied away from out of fear for retaliation by the repressive regime.
Nevertheless, some of these same polls suggest that around 50% of Gazans expect Hamas to win the war and still be in charge of Gaza at the end of the day, a perception that itself can have implications for how much pressure dissenting voices are inclined to apply toward a given policy direction. The more likely leverage on Hamas decision-making would come from outside actors such as Qatar or Egypt. However, the man calling the shots from Gaza, Sinwar, is likely more impervious to such influence than Ismail Haniyeh, his predecessor who was spearheading their cease-fire negotiating team until his presumptive assassination by Israel. In either case, the hardline Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attack, has been considered the final word all along on what kind of deal Hamas would accept.
Kurtzer-Ellenbogen: For the Biden administration, which has been heavily engaged in trying to push a cease-fire agreement over the finish line, the killings of the six hostages, including one dual U.S.-Israel citizen, injects both new urgency and challenge into achieving a deal. Following initial signals of optimism and quickly dashed hopes over a U.S. bridging proposal in mid-August, there were already signs of U.S. despair at the parties ever being willing to reach an agreement, with reporting that it was putting in place a “take it or leave it” deal that would be it’s last effort at trying to broker an agreement between the parties.
The administration was unequivocal in lambasting Hamas for taking the lives of the hostages, stating that Hamas would “pay for these crimes,” but Biden initially also conveyed sharp frustration with the Israeli prime minister unequivocally responding to reporters that the Israeli leader wasn’t doing enough to bring a deal to fruition. The U.S. has likewise evinced frustration with Hamas over its intransigence in the months since its draft cease-fire resolution was adopted by U.N. Security Council as Resolution 2735.
The U.S. administration is anxious to see an end to the fighting in Gaza, not just as a means to securing a return of the hostages to Israel and to bringing about an end to the ongoing war in Gaza so that recovery and reconstruction in the beleaguered strip can begin, but because it also sees a cease-fire as an important key to avoiding a region-wide escalation. With an assessment that all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon was recently avoided, but not yet to be ruled out; that Israel-Iran escalation remains a possibility; and with extremist violence spiraling in the West Bank amid the longest Israeli raid in two-decades targeting Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad commanders and infrastructure, the prospect of deep and deadly deterioration and a region on fire cannot be ruled out. Voices across the U.S. political spectrum have variably called for intensified efforts toward a cease-fire, toward defeating Hamas or toward more pressure on Iran. As uncertainty over the diplomatic and military trajectory reign, the only certainty is no relief in sight for the anguish of Israelis and Palestinians suffering the impacts of an unrelenting war.