Hostage rescue less vital to many Israelis than defeat of Hamas

The Hostage Families Forum occupies three floors of a high-end Tel Aviv office building. Under the motto “Bring Them Home Now!” The group generates millions of dollars in donations and gets worldwide publicity from international tours by stricken relatives.

With so much global attention on the hostages – about 100 remain in Gaza after being taken by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 – it may seem from afar like the main obstacle to their release is the will of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose war aims have become central to his political survival.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken this week toured the Middle East for a fifth time since the start of the conflict to try and broker a deal to end the Gaza war, which has been raging for four months since the initial Hamas attack on Israel. Any agreement between the sides would include the release of hostages in return for a cease-fire, yet no deal has been reached.

As a headline in the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper put it Wednesday, “Netanyahu Sacrificed Israeli Hostages in Gaza for Empty Slogans and Political Gain.” That evening, the PM rejected the most recent Hamas offer as “delusional” and said Israel has only one option – “total victory” over the Iran-backed group.

And while Netanyahu’s thinking clearly links to his own political future – he relies heavily on pro-war, right-wing support – he’s far from alone in this view of priorities. About 40% of Israeli Jews say it’s more important to defeat Hamas than to bring home the hostages, polls show.

Even some hostage families agree. A group has broken away from the main forum over objections to the focus on their loved ones above that of military victory.

“We care about the hostages, but we care about the future of Israel,” said Zvika Mor, whose son Eitan, 23, was taken hostage while working as a security guard at the Nova music festival when Hamas operatives embarked on a mass slaughter. “We think that the war is the main thing.”

Any deal that would free Mor’s son would likely involve releasing Hamas prisoners from Israeli jails. “We think it‘s crazy that the people of Israel will release terrorists who will then kill Jews again,” he told reporters. Eitan, the oldest of eight children, has previously told the family “If I am taken hostage, do not do a prisoner swap to let me free,” Mor said.

Right and left

Israeli surveys show that the divide between whether to focus on the hostages or military victory closely follows the split between left and right. While conservative and religious voters support the war as a top priority, the more secular and left-leaning say the release of hostages should come first. Mor lives in a settlement on the West Bank, one of two main Palestinian territories along with Gaza.

Netanyahu’s base is conservative and religious. A new group calling itself “The Reservists’ Camp” organized a pro-war demonstration in Jerusalem Thursday night. Rabbi Eli Sadan, who runs a military preparatory academy in the West Bank and who said 17 of his graduates have been killed in the conflict, issued a call to attend the rally, saying, “The blood of the fallen will not be in vain.”

A number of reserve soldiers who’ve been pulled out of Gaza as the military reconfigures its operations say they don’t want to come home before finishing the job. There are Facebook pages of soldiers saying that if they’re captured in battle, they don’t want Palestinian prisoners released in a deal for their freedom.

In 2011, Israel traded more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for one Israeli soldier who’d been held by Hamas for five years. Many now consider that trade ill-advised.

The war has killed more than 27,000 Gazans, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and driven nearly 2 million people from their homes. Israel says it’s contemplating extending attacks toward the southern city of Rafah, where more than one million refugees are gathered and disease is spreading. Hamas is designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. and European Union.

Israel says it needs to dismantle the Hamas military, which has built an elaborate network of underground tunnels and infrastructure in Gaza, or its operatives will again enter Israel and kill its citizens. Netanyahu’s government fears militias in Lebanon and the West Bank might do the same.

Equal aim

In the days after the Hamas attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 240 kidnapped, the government retaliated in Gaza while barely mentioning the rescue of hostages.

After the families organized a lobby group, joined by many who’d previously demonstrated against Netanyahu’s populist policies, the freeing of hostages quickly became an official aim of the war along with the defeat of Hamas.

In November, a cease-fire permitted an exchange of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners for about 100 hostages. Some 100 or so remain, with another several dozen thought to be dead. There are 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Since the goals of destroying Hamas and securing the hostages can appear to contradict each other – the easiest way to free the kidnapped would be to empty Israeli prisons of Palestinians and remove forces from Gaza – the government and military have joined the two as if they’re linked.

They say the best way to get hostages out is through military pressure.

“More terrorists killed, more commanders killed, more infrastructure destroyed, and this pressure leads us to achieve one more important goal – bringing home the hostages,” Lt. Col. Herzi Halevi, the military’s chief of staff, said Wednesday. “It won’t happen without military pressure.”