One month has passed since the harrowing events of October 7th, when Hamas terrorists entered Israel with the sole purpose of unleashing hell on innocent civilians. As the conflict escalates both inside and outside the country, it is easy to lose sight of the most painful memento of that day: the people who were kidnapped and are still in Hamas’ captivity, deep inside Gaza’s concrete jungle.
And while the Western world is still preoccupied with debating whether Israel’s responses are proportional—with pro-Palestinian activists tearing down hostage posters, trying to erase the topic from the debate—Israel’s hostage dilemma is becoming the country’s greatest “existential test,” as Prime Minister Netanyahu put it.
According to the Israeli government, Hamas terrorists kidnapped 242 people on October 7th, including 33 children, ranging from 9 months to 85 years old. A significant portion are military personnel, while the civilians even include peace activists who were living close to the Gaza border and dedicating their lives to Palestinian rights. Along with the Israelis, citizens of 25 countries—including the U.S., France, Spain, Italy, and Germany, with the largest group (54 people) being Thai nationals—are also among those held in Gaza.
So far, Hamas released only four Israeli hostages—two of them American citizens—in response to Qatari and Egyptian pressure. A fifth hostage—a young, female IDF soldier— was rescued in a joint operation on October 30th by the military and Israeli intelligence agencies.
It’s hard to assess how many of the hostages might have lost their lives during their month-long captivity. Hamas, for one, claimed that around 50 captives died in the Israeli airstrikes, while a smaller faction, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said that 60 Israeli hostages were missing under the rubble. But considering the constant disinformation coming out of Gaza, these figures cannot be taken at face value before independent verification is possible.
Hamas, of course, has an attractive solution to the problem. According to a statement released last week by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the terrorist organization was ready for an “immediate prisoner swap” with Israel: the hostages for all Palestinians—around 6,700 people—currently in Israeli detention, but only after Israel agreed to a ceasefire.
Understandably, the captives’ desperate families are angry with Netanyahu’s government for not agreeing to the exchange right away. Some of them have been protesting in front of the Israeli defense ministry since last Saturday, vowing to only go home together with their missing loved ones.
“That is the only victory that can be done. Israel was defeated,” said an elderly protester whose three grandchildren, all between four and ten years old, are held captive in Gaza. “I want the Israeli authorities to pay any price that is needed to get them back now.”
Most of the families share this opinion—but not all of them. “I miss my brother with all my heart, but we know that a ceasefire and prisoner exchange are destructive for our children’s future,” another said on Saturday before the families met with government officials.
“There is a sense that they won’t come out alive,” said Ilan Feldman, who had two family members kidnapped.
But I think this is bigger than me or us. This is a fight against right and wrong. It is that simple.
The argument, which is shared by many in the country, is not only that ceasefire means surrender, but also that the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, currently held on “security grounds,” would instantly become a terror threat once released, further perpetuating the cycle of violence.
There’s good reason to believe this. In 2011, Israel released 1,027 Palestinian inmates—including terrorists and mass murderers—in exchange for one IDF soldier, Gilad Schalit. It wasn’t the first time the country was ready to pay a high price for its citizens, as Tel Aviv traded 6,000 captured Egyptians for 11 Israelis after the Six Days War in 1967, and another 8,400 in exchange for 242 soldiers after the Yom Kippur War in 1974.
But the 2021 prisoner swap was different, and nobody was aware of the real price until October 7th of this year. Two of the masterminds behind Operation ‘Al-Aqsa Flood’—the massacre of 1,400 Israelis a month ago—were among the one thousand swapped for Schalit, and among the hundreds of inmates who immediately joined the ranks of Hamas.
Hamas knows exactly what it’s doing. It’s looking to secure a ceasefire to organize its ranks, gaining thousands of new soldiers in the process and getting ready to relaunch its attack a few months later.
And it also knows that the easiest way to achieve that goal is to ramp up pressure on the Israeli government through the desperate, worrying families. Just as the families were meeting Prime Minister Netanyahu on Saturday, Hamas released a video of three hostages, pleading for the government to agree to the deal.
“The stories published by Hamas are part of their psychological games,” Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told the families on the same day.
Hamas is cynically using those who are dear to us—they understand the pain and the pressure.
Netanyahu, in turn, promised the families that his government would do everything to rescue every single hostage—except agreeing to a ceasefire. “The Bible says that ‘there is a time for peace and time for war,” the prime minister told journalists recently in response to Hamas’ demands.
Some form of a prisoner exchange, however, is reportedly on the government’s negotiating table and is currently being discussed. On Sunday, November 5th, a group of senior Israeli officials spent long hours at a closed-door meeting with their Egyptian counterparts in Cairo, presumably talking about further mediation in hostage negotiations. On Tuesday, November 7th, Israel even appointed a new “coordinator of international efforts for the release of hostages in Gaza” to involve other foreign partners as well.
Tel Aviv’s counter-proposal would probably never involve the release of all 6,700 inmates, but it doesn’t mean Israel is not trying to find an acceptable balance. Naturally, every minute feels too long for the families of the hostages—there is no debate about that—but a government is responsible for an entire nation and must act accordingly. As Rabbi Stewart Weiss, director of the Jewish Outreach Center of Ra’anana wrote in his recent opinion piece:
There can be no decision more difficult than knowing a loved one is in the hands of a tormentor. Our hearts go out to these poor families, and we pray daily that the captives will be reunited with all of us. Family members, understandably, will do all they can to win back their captured relatives, even as they become unwilling pawns of Hamas’ psychological and emotional warfare.
But we, the nation at large, cannot, must not, jeopardize the future of our country by submitting to the blackmail being forced upon us. … We must be determined, resolute, and fiercely uncompromising in our mission to wipe out the terrorists. And we must be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice – as so many already have done – to secure the future of the State of Israel and all of the people of Israel. The alternative is unthinkable.
