Amnon Lord
Israel Hayom, Jan. 16, 2025
“… senior Diplomatic-Security Cabinet ministers are pleased with what they’re hearing from Trump’s team.”
Hamas is left with just one card, one final coin in its pocket. “This isn’t the same Hamas as during the [Gilad] Schalit deal,” a senior source has told me. “Back then, they had complete control of the [Gaza] Strip with all their mechanisms intact. What they received then was a bonus. In today’s situation, Hamas would gladly give up the hostages – their last card – just to return to where they were before Oct. 7.”
This perhaps offers a proportional perspective as we approach the hostage release deal. “No prime minister would want to be in this situation – deciding between the hostages and future dangers. Such a deal is always charged with many emotions.”
But there’s a broader view – we have nothing more to gain from prolonging the war, as we’ve already achieved the major objectives. As the past two weeks have shown, Israel is on the verge of stagnation in Gaza, with the cost being more casualties. This is the price of fighting that must continue until we get back our last hostage. I’m already looking at the days after the deal’s implementation. The “day after” is far more relevant to us Israelis than the political goal of endlessly deliberating what will happen in Gaza afterward. For us Jews, the release of the hostages will fulfill one of the war’s greatest achievements. At the war’s start, it was very difficult to envision an ending where Hamas would be crushed, Gaza in ruins, and we would recover numerous hostages without leaving any living hostages in Hamas’ hands.
We can’t easily dismiss voices measuring the deal’s worth against future dangers. But I have an answer to this. While Hamas may be like crabgrass – we haven’t fully weeded the field – it has no offensive capability, and Gazan society as a whole has suffered losses beyond anything they imagined. Regarding the danger of released prisoners, Oct. 7 proved Palestinians have no shortage of mass murderers. What these cannibals learned is that the price of massacre and kidnapping is total war with destruction on a massive scale, including the killing of thousands of terrorists and unavoidable civilian casualties among those trapped as human shields for the murderous gangs. …SOURCE