The worst part of the hostage deal ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Friday, January 17, 2025

The worst part of the hostage deal

Perhaps the worst part of the hostage deal is that it was made without Israel knowing which hostages are still alive. That information should have been a prerequisite for even negotiating to begin with, not a detail to find out after Hamas gains anything.

In February 2006, Hassan Nasrallah announced in Hezbollah media that he planned to get Samir Kuntar released from Israeli prison that year. Kuntar was the most loathsome terrorist in Israeli custody, having murdered a father in front of his 4-year old daughter and then smashing her head, killing her too. (It gets worse. Gruesome details here)

In July Hezbollah ambushed IDF soldiers on the border, kidnapping two and killing three - and killing five more during a frantic attempt to get the soldiers back. Immediately Nasrallah announced he wanted Kuntar released in exchange for the two soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser.

Israel refused and went to war instead. But in the end, Israel agreed to the deal Nasrallah launched the war to get.

During the negotiations for the exchange two years later, Hezbollah did not reveal whether Regev and Goldwasser were still alive. Hezbollah never let the Red Cross visit them. The entire country was kept in agony during the negotiations, hoping they were still alive.

No one knew for sure until the actual deal occurred and all Israel receive was two coffins in exchange for Kuntar, several other Hezbollah militants and 200 bodies.

Hezbollah achieved all of its war aims and Israel achieved none. The only thing Israel seemed to gain was UNSC 1701, which by the time of the exchange was clearly never going to be implemented by Lebanon. The deal is what made Hezbollah the unquestioned victor of the 2006 war.

All of this feels like déjà vu now. This nightmare is being repeated. Getting thousands of prisoners released was one of Hamas' primary aims in the October 7 attacks. Israel learned nothing from the deal they made in 2008.

The worst part is that we do not know the fate of a single hostage. Even those that made videos may, God forbid, no longer be alive. Hamas already claimed that one female hostage was killed by an Israeli airstrike this week - psychological torture fo rwhich it pays no price.

Like 2008, Israel is trading living terrorists for what may be only corpses. It is important to retrieve bodies, of course, but not nearly as important as saving the living. The price being paid is way too steep without knowing how many are alive.

Israel is bound by international law to treat its prisoners humanely. Hamas has no such concerns. I personally would have no moral qualms about killing every single Palestinian terrorist with blood on their hands and then telling Hamas as their bodies are returned, "oops, they must have been killed by your rocket attacks." Unfortunately, Israel cannot do that, and the next Yahya Sinwar could be freed in this deal.

But after the Kuntar deal, how could Israel make an agreement without knowing ahead of time which hostages are alive and which aren't?

(From a tweet early this morning. I couldn't go back to sleep until I wrote it.)