For a year now, freeing the hostages taken by Hamas has been a top goal for Israel, but 101 still remain unaccounted for. Hope of a deal to get them home in the foreseeable future is waning quickly.
Of the 240 people taken hostage from Israel by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, 117 have either been freed during temporary truces or rescued during Israel Defense Forces (IDF) missions. Dozens of the 101 who have not been freed are believed to be dead.
Four Americans – Keith Siegel, 65, Sagui Dekel-Chen, 36, Omer Neutra, 22, and Edan Alexander, 21 – remain trapped among them.
Many hostage families have lost faith in the U.S. and Israeli governments. “We don’t believe that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s priority is to bring home the hostages,” Hannaha Siegel, Keith Siegel’s niece, told CNN on Monday.
“The ability to negotiate with [Hamas Leader Yaya] Sinwar to try to get the hostages that remain alive out is extremely unlikely,” said Mark Schwartz, a retired Army general and former U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority.
“There’s no strategic benefit at all for Hamas. The hostages are useful human shields and getting several hundred Palestinians out of prisons, big deal,” he said, referring to a potential prisoner exchange. “That’s not going to extend the life of Hamas leadership that resides inside Gaza.”
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President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have for months implored Netanyahu to agree to a cease-fire deal that would see the hostages returned home.
However, as war spread from Gaza to Lebanon to Tel Aviv – and with Israel considering an aggressive response to Iran’s most recent missile attack – U.S. calls for a cease-fire increasingly rattle around an empty echo chamber.
“The mood is poor right now,” said Michael Makovsky, president of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America.
“What’s in Sinwar’s interest to make a deal? Hamas’ military capability is pretty much destroyed. I don’t think he thinks he’s ever going to get out alive. I don’t think he necessarily wants to leave Gaza alive anyway.”
Sinwar, Hamas’ shadowy leader and the architect of the Oct. 7 attacks, is believed to be alive and still committed to the destruction of Israel.
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On the eve of the anniversary of the attacks, Netanyahu held his first meeting on the plight of the hostages in a month. According to The Times of Israel, his officials warned him intel on the hostages was quickly drying up. They reportedly told him they believed half of the hostages remained alive and were subject to increasingly squalid conditions. They also warned that Hamas militants were under orders to execute them if they felt the IDF was closing in on their position.
Hamas executed six hostages in a tunnel in Rafah in August as the IDF drew near.
“You want to hold out hope for someone to be rescued, but for a hostage deal, it’s not looking good,” said Makovsky.
“I think Netanyahu should have demonstrated more sympathy towards the hostages early on, and then it became kind of entrenched that half the Israeli electorate didn’t like him anyway, so he didn’t care.
“In fairness to him, he was the prime minister that cut what turned out to be a terrible deal – which they released over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners – for one Israeli hostage in Gaza,” added Makovsky. “One of those prisoners was Sinwar.”
In 2011, Israel agreed to an exchange where it released 1,027 Palestinian prisoners – including Sinwar – for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Sinwar was 22 years into four life sentences he received in Israel for orchestrating the killing of two Israeli soldiers and four Palestinians he believed to be collaborators in 1989.
Gershon Baskin, who led negotiations on that deal, said he believes Hamas is ready to strike an agreement – and it is not the one U.S. officials have worked on for months.
“It would end the war in three weeks with an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. They would release and return all the hostages, military, civilian, alive and dead, and there would be an agreed-upon release of Palestinian prisoners. Hamas has agreed to me in writing that they would transfer the governance in Gaza to a civilian, technocratic, professional government, which they will not be part of.”
Critics of such ideas say they fall short of eliminating Hamas, which could rebuild itself and once again threaten Israel.
Baskin does not work on behalf of Israel or Hamas in any official capacity, but he said U.S. officials are aware of the offer and need to pressure Netanyahu and Hamas to work it out between themselves.
In May, Biden unveiled a three-phase deal that would see Hamas return 18–32 hostages in exchange for 800 Palestinian prisoners and a six-week pause in fighting.
“It’s a bad deal, and I know that the American leadership – [CIA Director Bill] Burns and [White House Middle East coordinator Brett] McGurk and others have invested themselves deeply in these negotiations, but they need to simply recognize that it’s not going anywhere,” Baskin said. “It’s a dead deal, and they need to pick up another deal that might actually work.”
Efforts to reach the White House and the Israeli government for comment for purposes of this story were unsuccessful at press time.
