Netanyahu vowed “crushing revenge,” but the fate of Israeli soldiers, the elderly, women and children who were taken to Gaza and whose numbers remain unclear complicates how Israel will fulfill its promise to respond in a strong and effective manner while at the same time adhering to the old principle of leaving no one behind.
Israelis are shocked by the attack and the images of their citizens who were taken to Gaza.
In 2011, Israel exchanged hundreds of Palestinian prisoners to secure the release of one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, who was held captive for five years. That kind of exchange seems impossible when it comes to taking dozens of hostages this time. The Shalit deal was criticized by some Israelis as disproportionate.
It is difficult to predict what will happen next.
Insurance policy
“The harsh reality is that Hamas held hostages as an insurance policy against Israeli action to retaliate, specifically a massive ground attack, and to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
He added, “Will this restrict how Israel responds? If the numbers are huge, how can it not be restricted?”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that Israel would move to free the detainees, inflict severe damage on Hamas’ “terrorist infrastructure” and ensure that no “terrorist group” in Gaza would be able to harm Israeli citizens again.
But there are no easy choices. Trying to rescue all those Hamas said were being held in various locations would put their lives in danger. But holding lengthy negotiations with Hamas regarding a prisoner exchange may represent a major victory for Hamas.
Netanyahu, who heads one of the most right-wing governments in Israel’s history, called on opposition leaders to join a unity government, seeking to garner greater support for any decision to respond.
Netanyahu has painful memories of operations to free prisoners and hostages. In 1976, his older brother was killed while rescuing hostages from Entebbe Airport in Uganda, an event that Netanyahu said shaped his future life.
His late brother, Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan “Yoni” Netanyahu, led an attack team consisting of 29 special forces personnel who invaded the airport terminal to rescue Israelis and other passengers on an Air France plane after Palestinian and German hijackers changed its destination to Uganda.
In a previous incident in 1972, Palestinian militants from the Black September organization took members of the Israeli Olympic team hostage in the Sports Village in Munich. Within 24 hours, 11 Israelis, five Palestinians and a German policeman were killed after rescue efforts turned into an exchange of fire.
Israel responded by sending agents to kill Palestinian militants it saw as the masterminds of the attack in what is said to be a secret operation that lasted for years. Several Palestinians were assassinated in various locations in Europe and the Middle East.
A new scope for the challenge
Gaza represents a different scale of challenge. In his long career, Netanyahu has shown that ground campaigns are of little interest to him and that Gaza would be a messy location to wage war. More than two million people are crowded into a narrow strip of land administered by Hamas, which has controlled it since a short war erupted in 2007 with security forces loyal to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, based in the West Bank.
The late Prime Minister Ariel Sharon described Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 while he was leading the government as painful, but said that controlling this densely populated area was very difficult. Sharon was a military commander in the 1973 war.
Netanyahu may follow a more well-known strategy of assassinating Hamas leaders with air strikes and bombings. One of the most important operations was the assassination of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, with a missile strike from a helicopter in 2004. But these strikes did not deter Hamas.
Saleh Al-Arouri, deputy head of the Hamas political bureau, said that the movement now has a huge number of Israeli prisoners in its possession, and Hamas has not announced any numbers yet, saying that it has enough prisoners to secure the release of all Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.
The Palestinian Prisoners Club Association estimates the number of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons at approximately 5,250 prisoners.
If Israel agrees to release all of them, it will be a valuable victory for Hamas and other armed factions, and for this reason it will be a political deal that is difficult for Netanyahu or any Israeli leader to conclude.
But Muhannad Al-Haj Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center said negotiations appear to be the only clear way forward.
He added, “No matter what kind of pain (Netanyahu) will inflict on the Palestinians, in terms of bombing buildings or assassinating their leaders in Gaza, this will not diminish what Hamas inflicted on Israel.”
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