The Israeli army confirmed this Saturday afternoon what had been seen in videos of the first hour: the unprecedented and elaborate surprise operation of the armed groups in Gaza not only claimed at least 200 lives, but also dozens of militiamen who managed to infiltrate Israel (by Exploiting gaps in the border barrier, opening a gap with an excavator or flying over it with paragliders), have kidnapped civilians and taken soldiers as prisoners of war.
Armed forces spokesman Daniel Hagari did not specify the number, although Abu Obeida, spokesman for the Ezedín Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing, put them at dozens, including “senior officials and soldiers.” Not everyone seems to be alive in the propaganda pictures. The militants also still have hostages in the towns of Ofakim and Bari, where elite Israeli troops have moved.
The videos show situations that previously seemed reserved for fiction, such as four Israeli civilians being forcibly taken into Gaza, many others lying on the ground with their hands behind their heads, and a young woman being pushed into a vehicle , or a confused older woman. on the Strip between collective enthusiasm. One group was also seen forcibly removing two soldiers from a military vehicle and another threw an apparently dead soldier to the ground before trampling him next to the car.
These are people the militias could have easily killed, as they controlled several towns in the area for hours and even introduced Israeli armored vehicles into the Gaza Strip. The decision is no coincidence.
“To our prisoners, I say: What we have in our hands will bring your freedom,” Saleh Al Aruri, number two in Hamas’ political bureau, told Al Jazeera television, referring to the approximately 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s prisons. said the Israeli human rights NGO Btselem. Islamic Jihad, which has also claimed responsibility for several kidnappings, has made the release of all prisoners a condition for the release of “all prisoners in the hands of Palestinian resistance organizations.” His spokesman, Dawood Shihab, said on Saturday that Israel was detaining Palestinian “women and children” and therefore “does not take into account” whether the Israeli prisoners are “adults, women or children.”
Over the decades, Israel has released thousands of prisoners in exchange. Some were the usual post-war conflicts between countries, such as those fought with their neighbors after their founding in 1948, the Six-Day Wars in 1967, or the Yom Kippur War in 1967 1973, but for others it is more about the awareness of one’s own enemies that this is their weak point.
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“I think they wanted to kidnap a few people to use them for negotiations, not to risk a collapse or an end,” Israeli political analyst Avi Issajarof told The Times of Israel newspaper, pointing out The scale of this Saturday’s operation changes the equation so much that possible agreements behind the scenes and through intermediaries like the previous ones are buried.
The kidnapping of soldiers is a particularly sensitive issue in Israel. Military service is compulsory for both men (up to three years) and women and there is a kind of tacit agreement by which the state asks its young people to put on the uniform in return for the assurance that it will, If something goes wrong, he will not abandon them to their fate or at least do his utmost to ensure that they receive a dignified burial.
In 2011, for example, he agreed to the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners for a single soldier, Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas was holding in Gaza. Two years earlier, he even released 20 Palestinians in exchange for proof that he was alive.
The importance of the bodies was demonstrated in 2008 when Israel released five prisoners and returned 200 bodies of Lebanese and Palestinians to recover the lifeless bodies of two soldiers captured by the Lebanese Hezbollah militia in an operation that ended a bloody war of 33 days broke out between them. The pill was particularly bitter not because of the number, but because one of them was Samir Kuntar, author of one of the most brutal attacks and sentenced to 542 years in prison for three murders in Israel. His impressive and triumphant reception added salt to the wound. Kuntar was later murdered in 2015.
If that price were maintained, releasing the number of hostages Hamas is believed to be holding today would mean clearing Palestinian prisons. But this Saturday’s historic attack makes it unthinkable because it would represent a show of weakness for Israel. And above all because he is preparing to first launch an “energetic and protracted election campaign,” as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defined it in conversation with United States President Joe Biden.
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