We fully support the deal to get the hostages home that Israel and Hamas agreed to in Qatar – but with reservations.
As President Isaac Herzog told the nation on Wednesday night in his appeal to the government to approve the agreement, the deal was a “necessary move.”
“There is no greater moral, human, Jewish, or Israeli obligation than to bring our sons and daughters back to us – whether to recover at home, or to be laid to rest,” he said.
Nevertheless, failure to acknowledge that the agreement is fraught with potentially dangerous pitfalls that have far-reaching implications for the future security of Israel would be irresponsible.
Similarly, acknowledging those dangers does not necessarily make you a proponent of keeping the hostages in captivity or stepping in line with hardline coalition members, such as Itamar Ben-Gvir or Bezalel Smotrich. It’s simply being realistic.
And those views – which are held by many camps in the Israeli landscape, including some families of hostages that have been held in Gaza for 468 days – should be considered and not simply dismissed as hawkish nonsense aimed at continuing the war.
The downsides of the agreement are clear for all to see. As Herzog said, “Let there be no illusions. This deal – when signed, approved, and implemented – will bring with it deeply painful, challenging, and harrowing moments… among the greatest challenges we have ever known.”
The deal will release some 1,000 Palestinian terrorists from Israeli prisons, making the region an inestimably more dangerous place. We know what happened in the years after the Gilad Schalit release. Security experts are predicting that the effects of this wave of releases will be even worse.
The troubling future
As troubling, if not more so, is the ambiguity over the future of Hamas.
In all of the material that has been leaked or revealed about the details of the deal, and neither in US President Biden’s lengthy announcement about the agreement on Wednesday night, has there been nary a mention of what the world plans to do about Hamas and its cruel abuse of the Gazan people.
For those who forged the deal and pushed it through – the Biden and Trump administrations, working hand in hand with Egypt and Qatar – an immediate ceasefire and end to the war, the return of the hostages, and the beginning of efforts to rebuild Gaza were the driving elements.
The issue of whether Hamas will continue to thrive – as a terrorist government and as the leading force in Gaza – took a back seat.
Biden, in his remarks on Wednesday night, said: “This deal will halt the fighting in Gaza, surge much needed-humanitarian assistance to Palestinian civilians, and reunite the hostages with their families after more than 15 months in captivity.”
But there was no mention of Hamas retaining control of Gaza.
Trump, for his part, wrote on his social media platform: “With this deal in place, my National Security team, through the efforts of Special Envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, will continue to work closely with Israel and our Allies to make sure Gaza NEVER again becomes a terrorist safe haven.”
Exactly how that will take place, however, hasn’t been delineated anywhere.
As Israel prepares to make the ultimate sacrifice to return its citizens home and stop fighting the force that unleashed all of this evil on October 7, 2023, it’s incumbent to know that Gaza cannot once again be used as a launching pad for rocket attacks or ground invasions by Hamas.
Thursday’s delay in the cabinet meeting and approval of the deal demonstrates how delicate and problematic the process will be over the next few months, assuming it gets off the ground.
Perhaps the only way to get our hostages home is to kick the thorniest of issues down the road – such as who is going to replace Hamas as a functioning non-terrorist government that will focus on rehabilitating Gaza instead of spending a fortune on tunnels and rockets to attack Israel.
Or will the advocates of the deal simply admit silently that Hamas is going nowhere, and when the last Israeli troops leave Gaza, we’ll find ourselves in exactly the same situation we were in on October 6, 2023?
Yes, the deal must be accepted, even if that is the case. The hostages are sacrosanct.
But as always seems to be the case when Israel is forced to make huge concessions to save its own people, we must increase our vigilance and internalize that after this 15-month war, our enemy has not gone anywhere.
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