Everyone has their own images. Images of Israeli hostages held by Hamas appear everywhere, from the halls of Tel Aviv airport to major street intersections, on television banners and on the front pages of newspapers and websites. In a more confidential setting, the office of Yehuda Fuchs, Israeli army commander for the “Central Region” – the West Bank occupied by Israel since 1967 – houses photos of Hamas leaders: Yahya Sinouar, the movement’s leader, Mohammed Deif, leader of the armed wing and other lesser-known people – between fifty and a hundred people, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Aharonot. Major General Fuchs knows these faces: from 2016 to 2019 he was commander of the Gaza Division and responsible for monitoring the enclave.
All of Israel hovers between these two demands. Bring the hostages back alive while promising to shoot their captors. According to a survey commissioned by the Israel Democratic Institute, more than 90% of respondents want both the release of those abducted and the destruction of Hamas and the restoration of deterrence. But for the country’s most right-wing population, the first of these goals is seen as contradictory to the other two. And Benjamin Netanyahu himself cannot escape this tension between two poles.
The Israeli leader wants to maintain control of the Israeli right. But he faces competition from Yoav Gallant, defense minister on the offensive, and his most radical allies in the coalition, particularly Itamar Ben Gvir, national security minister. The latter declared on Channel 14, the mouthpiece of the radical right, that the swap agreement was a “catastrophe” – and, like his party’s MPs, voted against it. “Hamas wanted this ceasefire above all else,” he added, recalling that more than a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including Yahya Sinouar, were released during the release of French-Israeli hostage Gilad Shalit in 2011 – an agreement based on The agenda was Benjamin Netanyahu’s time. The Defense Minister continues to reiterate that the severity of the Israeli offensive, which, according to Hamas, caused the deaths of almost fifteen thousand Palestinians, made it possible to negotiate the current liberation from a position of strength.
“Wain time”
At the moment, Itamar Ben Gvir’s maximalist positions are working to his advantage: his party Otzma Yehudit (“Jewish Power”) is holding its own in the polls, while the Religious Zionist Party, led by Bezalel Smotrich, is the other supremacist representative of the coalition voted for the agreement with Hamas, fell below the representation threshold in the Knesset for the first time. As for Likud, Mr. Netanyahu’s party, it is no longer Israel’s leading party, ranking second behind the National Unity Party, an opposition coalition led by Benny Gantz and Gideon Saar.
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