Rami Igra, former head of the Prisoners and Missing Persons Division of the Mossad, spoke this Tuesday morning with Anat Davidov and Udi Segal on the 103FM radio, after Hamas rejected the current proposal for a hostage deal.
“I don’t think anything has changed since our last conversation. Hamas said from the beginning, ‘We demand an end to the war,’ not a ceasefire. They added all kinds of other demands to it, the restoration of the Gaza Strip and the withdrawal of the IDF. In short, what they demand from day one is a return to the state of matters from October 6 and their continued existence. The alternative to this is carrying out the war until the IDF’s end goals. Hamas is a religious movement ready to die on its sword. For some reason, and I didn’t understand it, we are conducting negotiations with ourselves and the Americans about prices; they didn’t get there at all. The question of the price is the question of the mediators and the Americans; Hamas has repeatedly said, ‘You don’t meet our demands,'” Igra began his words.
“With all the pain, and there really is enormous pain, the State of Israel has no possibility of making the deal Hamas is asking for. The State of Israel must think about the State of Israel, the citizen must think about his family and his children, brothers, etc., and the state must think not only about them but also about you, me, and our future. Is this tolerance until we reach a ceasefire or patience for the release of the hostages? The time for the survival of the hostages is much shorter. In this matter, we must remember one thing, the price we pay, in the end, is not the prisoners we release but the future we are marching towards. As we saw in the Schalit deal, it was not 1,027 prisoners, it was 2,000 deaths to date. Not that Schalit is to blame for this, the State of Israel is to blame for this. Our thinking that it is possible to solve this, to contain it, as we did before October 7 in Gaza, is wrong.”
Israel and the IDF ultimately aided Hamas and terrorism
“There is no way to complete the work afterward. As soon as we make a deal of this kind and commemorate the victory of Hamas, we will see what we saw a few days ago in Dolev. We are strengthening the axis of evil; we are building it as we built Hamas in the Schalit deal. We need to understand that magic will not end this conflict tomorrow morning. If they had left Gilad Schalit in captivity, then we would not have [reached this point]… We strengthened Hamas, we preferred Hamas to the Palestinian Authority,” continued Igra.
“Just as the price of the 250 people killed in the ground maneuver is, unfortunately, a necessary price. Yes, in war, there are necessary prices. But right now, Hamas has no real desire to make a deal, and it will not make one either. It wants survival and its continued existence, and as of this moment, it is Israel that has managed to embarrass itself among the nations in such a way that by tomorrow, the world will bring Israel to a ceasefire. Hamas will come to future negotiations in a completely different position of power that we have absolutely no ability to deal with,” Igra concluded his words.
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