Even if one accepts that the hostages must come first, the correct path forward is still far from obvious. The question remains: how best to bring them home?
August 28, 2025 13:53
Israel continues to be gripped by an unbearable choice as we approach the third year of the country’s longest war: should the Jewish state prioritise defeating Hamas or rescuing the hostages – men, women and children the jihadists seized precisely to prevent their own destruction? The country is split on this question, while the government must answer not only to anguished families but also to millions of citizens whose security depends on ensuring that October 7 can never be repeated.
Even if one accepts that the hostages must come first, the correct path forward is still far from obvious. The question remains: how best to bring them home? The prime minister insists the two objectives – defeating Hamas and saving the captives – are inseparable; only sustained military pressure, he argues, can force the terrorists to compromise. The record appears to support him. Every hostage deal so far has come in the wake of Israeli offensives. The July agreement collapsed, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said, because France, Britain and others, instead of pressuring Hamas, urged Israel to hold back while dangling recognition of a Palestinian state. Hamas concluded it could achieve its goals without conceding anything.
The same pattern was repeated in Gaza City. Only when Israeli preparations for a full-scale assault looked credible did Hamas suddenly edge towards terms it had flatly rejected just weeks earlier. Again, force created leverage. Inside Israel, however, the divisions are spilling into the streets. After last week’s mass protests demanding a deal, fresh demonstrations erupted on Tuesday, blocking major roads and surrounding ministers’ homes. For many Israelis, conscience demands that the hostages must come first.
This is why, writing in these pages, Benny Gantz has pledged to join the government if it prioritised the release of all hostages, coupled with long-overdue reforms to draft the strictly Orthodox into national service – measures intended both to strengthen Israel’s defence and bring about greater societal justice.
Netanyahu, however, now rejects any phased release, demanding instead a single, comprehensive deal – or else outright victory. The argument against another ceasefire goes like this: a partial deal that required Israel to withdraw, to halt fighting for 60 days, and to give Hamas breathing space to regroup, would risk eroding momentum and draining even Washington’s patience. Worse, it could end the war without ever having achieved Hamas’s defeat.
Yet the dangers of pressing on are equally stark. Hamas could begin executing hostages, or claim they were killed in Israeli strikes. Even if Gaza City falls, Hamas cadres may endure elsewhere, leaving perhaps half the hostages still in captivity. For Hamas, they are not bargaining chips but an insurance policy – the guarantee of its survival. The only scenario in which it might consider freeing them all is if Israel were to withdraw entirely, leaving Hamas still in power: a triumph that would embolden every enemy on Israel’s borders and re-expose its southern communities to eventual attacks.
Wherever one lands in this debate, the notion promoted by some Europeans even in the early stages of the conflict, that there supposedly exists an easy, clean solution – a path that is both morally unimpeachable and strategically sound, one that would simultaneously end the war and the suffering in Gaza, free the hostages, and remove Hamas from power – was always a fantasy.
The grim truth is that almost by definition, Israel has never had good options in its struggle against fanatical enemies who have perfected the use of their own civilians as human shields and sacrifices. Time and again, the country has had to settle for the least bad option. That is the tragedy of this war, and in many ways the tragedy of Israel’s position in the region – a truth that Israel’s friends in Europe persistently refuse to acknowledge.
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