Nearly everyone on the right agrees that it’s a terrible deal. My initial gut reaction is to concur with that assessment. But I’m going to take a different position here – my second take, as it were.
How could anyone not have mixed feelings about any Israeli/Hamas hostage deal? On the one hand, there are those incredibly sympathetic hostages, especially the children. On the other hand, there is the terrible price to pay: rewarding hostage-taking through the freeing of people dangerous to Israel’s future security, and pausing the military operations against Hamas.
If we were to do a cold-blooded cost/benefit analysis, it would seem obvious that no such deal should be made. But the Israeli government doesn’t have a history of cold-bloodedness on these things. And I find that, on reflection, I’m not so sure that the obvious answer is actually so very correct.
I’ve often heard people who criticize the current Israeli government for not going in to free the hostages comparing lack of such efforts unfavorably to the successful raid on Entebbe in 1976, in which hostages on a hijacked airplane were successfully rescued in Uganda. Entebbe was an incredible operation by the Israeli forces that caught the attention of the world, but it had little similarity to the hostage situation Israel now faces, because in 1976 the Israeli authorities knew the hostages were being held together at the Entebbe airport. What’s more:
Mossad built an accurate picture of the whereabouts of the hostages, the number of hijackers, and the involvement of Ugandan troops, based on information from the released hostages in Paris. Further, Israeli firms had been involved in construction projects in Africa during the 1960s and 1970s: while preparing the raid, the Israeli army consulted with Solel Boneh, a large Israeli construction firm that had built the terminal where the hostages were held.
… IDF major Muki Betser later remarked in an interview that Mossad operatives extensively interviewed the hostages who had been released. He said that a French-Jewish passenger who had a military background and “a phenomenal memory” had provided detailed information about the number of weapons carried by the hostage-takers.
That’s not to say the Entebbe rescue operation was easy. It was justly famous for its planning, audacity, and success:
Initiating the operation at nightfall on 4 July 1976, Israeli transport planes flew 100 commandos over 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) to Uganda for the rescue effort. Over the course of 90 minutes, 102 of the hostages were rescued successfully, with three having been killed. One of the dead hostages, Dora Bloch, had been murdered by Ugandan authorities at a hospital in Kampala shortly after the Israeli rescue operation; she had fallen ill during the hijacking and was removed from the plane for treatment prior to the commandos’ arrival. The Israeli military suffered five wounded and one killed; Yonatan Netanyahu was Israel’s sole fatality of Operation Entebbe, and had led Sayeret Matkal during the rescue effort – he was the older brother of Benjamin Netanyahu, who would later become Israel’s prime minister. The Israeli commandos killed all of the hijackers and 45 Ugandan soldiers, and eleven of Uganda’s MiG-17s and MiG-21s were destroyed.
I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert on the matter, but I really don’t see any logistical similarities to the present hostage situation, which seems far more challenging. So I simply don’t see a successful rescue raid as possible. The choices facing Israel’s leaders are between allowing the hostages to stay under Hamas control and to probably be tortured and even killed because without a deal they are worth nothing to Hamas, or doing some sort of deal.
Given that black-and-white choice, and the enormous amount of pressure (not only from the families of the hostages but from other Israelis too) to make a deal, it’s not surprising that the government would agree to an exchange. So, how bad is this particular exchange under these particular circumstances? I’m not so sure it’s all that bad.
Here’s my reasoning: at this point, the most important factor is whether Hamas is destroyed by Israel. If Israel fails to do that, any refusal to do a hostage deal probably wouldn’t have given Israel much future advantage. After all, if Hamas continues to function, jihadis will do their best to repeat October 7 whether or not terrorists are released for hostages. Hamas has made that clear. So it rests on whether Hamas is destroyed. Of course, to the extent that this deal will make it harder for Israel to do that, it’s a bad deal. But I’m not sure that in the long run, stopping the fighting for a few days will matter all that much. Either Israel has the will and the ability to get the job done or it does not.
Reportedly, the released prisoners in this deal would not – unlike in the Shalit deal – include high-ranking terrorist masterminds. I read somewhere (although I cannot find the source at the moment) that although some of the list of hostages to be released have aided murderers, none have themselves committed murder. They are for the most part teenagers and women – not that that means they can’t be very dangerous, of course. But given the attitude of most of the current Gazan population and how devoted to terrorism and Jew-murder they are, I think that these foot-soldier terrorists on the list could easily be replaced with others if they were kept in prison, so I’m not sure their release will matter all that much. Gaza seems to have a nearly inexhaustible supply. What will matter most of all is whether Israel is victorious in the war on Hamas, and whether it does what needs to be done after that victory to make it less likely that future attacks will happen. I don’t think that depends on whether these particular terrorists stay in prison or not. And if Israel is successful in that endeavor, other terrorist groups might take notice.
I’m trying to look on the brighter side here, while remaining realistic.
[NOTE: A couple of things I had forgotten about Entebbe – if I ever knew them in the first place – were the following:
(1) The 12-person French crew of the airplane refused to be released and chose to stay with the hostages. That’s incredibly impressive.
(2) Israel got help from Jomo Kenyatta’s Kenya, which allowed the rescuers to refuel. “Idi Amin subsequently issued orders for the Ugandan military to kill all Kenyans living in Uganda, leading to the deaths of 245 Kenyan-Ugandans and the exodus of around 3,000 Kenyans from Uganda.” I had not know Kenyans paid such a high price.
(3) Two of the hijackers were German leftists – this guy and his girlfriend – showing early on the link between leftists and Palestinian terrorists.]
