Comment on this storyComment
JERUSALEM – Shelly Shem Tov’s home has become a command center of panic.
Since their 21-year-old son Omer was kidnapped during a dance party on Saturday – while his parents helplessly tracked his phone as he crossed into the Gaza Strip – every room has been filled with friends and family looking for something, anything, to give them something gives hope.
More than two dozen volunteers had laptops at desks and phones in hand on Monday, typing messages, using social media and searching the world for answers they didn’t get from official sources.
“Nobody contacted us, nobody told us anything,” Shem Tov said, tears welling up again. “We need people to do their jobs.”
Grief and anger in southern Israel as the battle against militants continues
The scene is being repeated across the country as the families of more than 100 Israelis believed to be held captive in Gaza become increasingly desperate for information. In the absence of a government response, they fear the most likely: a massive military operation that they fear could put their loved ones in the line of fire.
Shem Tov’s group has set up a WhatsApp channel with more than 500 family members watching and waiting in horror.
For some families, their worst fears have already been confirmed. Videos reviewed by The Washington Post on Monday showed evidence that at least four people were killed in the city of Be’eri shortly after they were captured by Hamas.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday reappointed the vacant position of Commissioner for Prisoners and Missing Persons, who is responsible for building relationships with local and international negotiators. He appointed Gal Hirsch brigadier general of reserves.
Israel has a long and controversial history of hostage taking, hostage swapping and hostage rescues – sometimes deadly. Previous governments have negotiated with and fought for hostages.
In 1976, Israeli commandos stormed an airport in Entebbe, Uganda, and freed more than 100 Israelis who were being held by Palestinian captors. (Three of the prisoners were killed, as was Netanyahu’s commando brother.)
In 2011, Netanyahu agreed to release 1,027 Hamas prisoners from Israeli prisons in exchange for a captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who had been held in Gaza for more than five years.
But none of the previous episodes, experts say, compare to the mass abductions of children, grandparents and entire families, many of which were captured on video and shared on social media. And none of the options the government may consider are likely to end without further bloodshed, they said.
“This is unprecedented. We have never seen so many people captured and detained in a hostile area,” said Gershon Baskin, Israel’s negotiator in the Shalit case. “It is a new reality and it is difficult to measure how society will react to it.”
How a night of dancing and celebrating turned into a massacre in Israel
Among the challenges, Baskin said, is Hamas’s ability to hide prisoners in the 140-square-mile, densely populated enclave, which includes extensive underground networks.
Fighting between Israel and Hamas raged into its third day on October 9, with US officials saying nine Americans were killed in the violence. (Video: Naomi Schanen/The Washington Post)
Hamas said the hostages were being held in tunnels and other safe locations. Ahmed Abdul Hadi, Hamas’s representative in Lebanon, denied reports that the group was negotiating a prisoner swap with Qatar: “There is nothing like that at the moment,” he told The Post on Monday. “It’s too early for this conversation.”
A spokesman for Hamas’s military wing told Al Jazeera on Monday that the group would begin publicly executing a civilian hostage every time homes in Gaza were hit by Israeli airstrikes “without prior warning.”
Until Saturday’s surprise attack, Israeli intelligence in Gaza was considered effective, but Hamas had already demonstrated its determination to hide hostages. On the day of Shalit’s release, the militants sent out more than 30 decoy vehicles, Baskin said. The prisoner was not in any of them.
“There is no possibility of mass rescue because there is no way Hamas can keep them together,” he said.
According to Danny Orbach, a military historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the prospects of a big deal aren’t much more likely.
Public opinion, which largely supported the unilateral exchange of numerous prisoners for a single soldier, has eroded over time. Some analysts blame the released fighters for fueling future terrorist attacks.
“Israel will not be able to surrender to Hamas on this issue,” Orbach said.
The multi-pronged attack, which killed at least 800 people, shook Israel’s shaky but enduring coexistence with Hamas. The regular missile launches and periodic wars were largely seen as an acceptable price to pay for otherwise containing the militant group. Now the country appears to be united in calling for major military intervention, regardless of the cost.
Israel has massed troops in the West Bank. Then Hamas attacked from Gaza.
“I think that the Israeli public, from the far left to the far right, finds the price of coexistence with Hamas unbearable,” Orbach said.
Both experts believed that a small-scale hostage trade was possible, such as exchanging children, old and sick Israelis for female and sick Hamas prisoners. But no one believed that the hostages would deter Israel from launching an overwhelming attack on Gaza.
“The public wants to go to Gaza and attack Hamas,” Orbach said. “The public also wants the hostages to be rescued safely. I don’t think they have come to terms with the inherent contradiction.”
For the families of the detainees, the scenarios are further torture.
Adva Adar, 32, ignores the debate about next steps that is raging on social media and on television. She clings to the hope that her 85-year-old widowed grandmother will come home.
“We try not to entertain those thoughts,” Adar said. “We just want them back.”
Yaffa Adar, a resident of Nir-Oz, a kibbutz just a few miles from the Gaza border, took the last from her basement at 9 a.m. Saturday, the day the family planned to gather for the Sukkot holiday Get in touch: “There are terrorists on the way,” she texted them.
The family had no idea what had happened until a video emerged showing their grandmother being driven across the Gaza border in her own golf cart. She suffers from heart and lung problems and takes medication for chronic pain.
“Without her medication, every minute is a horror for her,” Adar said.
Sarah Dadouch in Beirut contributed to this report.