Behind Hamas’s Piecemeal Hostage Strategy

By setting free four hostages in pairs in recent days, Hamas is playing its most effective card for delaying an Israeli ground invasion of Gaza and extracting concessions from the Israelis, officials and analysts said, as international pressure grows on Israel to negotiate the release of all the captives.

The militant group on Wednesday told mediators it was willing to release a larger group of the more than 200 people held in Gaza, but doubled down on its demand for a steady flow of humanitarian aid, including fuel, and for Israel to reduce the intensity of its airstrikes, officials familiar with the talks said.

“It’s posturing and it’s to keep the negotiations alive,” said Tariq Kenney-Shawa, a U.S. policy fellow at al-Shabaka, a Palestinian policy institute based in California. “What these piecemeal hostage releases do is that it buys time for Hamas and it chips away at this initial international support that Israel was enjoying.”

By delaying Israel’s expected ground assault, even by a few more weeks, Hamas would be able to better prepare to defend itself in Gaza, ensuring the group’s survival in the short term.

Israel cut off all supplies of food, water, fuel and electricity to the Gaza Strip in response to the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, which the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group, that killed 1,400 Israelis. Since then, Israeli airstrikes in the Palestinian enclave have killed more than 6,500 people, according to the Hamas-led local health ministry. The rising death toll of Palestinian civilians in the enclave also erodes some of the international support for the Israeli offensive, according to Kenney-Shawa.

Israel allowed the deliveries of humanitarian aid to Gaza on Saturday, a day after the first two hostages were released by Hamas. But it has opposed shipments of fuel to Gaza out of concerns that Hamas would use it for military purposes.

U.S. and European officials in recent days have urged Israel to delay a ground operation to allow more time for the hostage negotiations to play out. Within Israel, the families of the hostages are pushing the government to strike an agreement with Hamas before a land assault that could put their safety at risk.

Amid growing pressure to secure the release of the hostages, the Israeli military called on Gaza residents to help it find them, promising money, protection and confidentiality to anybody who provides useful information, according to an English translation provided by the Israel Defense Forces of the message it distributed in Gaza.

It remains unclear how Hamas chose the four hostages it has released so far. The first two were Americans and the second pair were elderly Israeli women.

Experts say Hamas could free some civilian hostages in return for concessions like humanitarian aid while holding on to Israeli soldiers with the aim of eventually freeing a large number of Palestinian prisoners in an exchange with Israel.

“Eventually it is the soldiers, male and female, who are the core of the trade in those terms. So they have buffers. They have degrees of freedom of maneuver and they can draw time,” said Tamir Hayman, a reserve brigadier general in the Israeli military.

“They’re dripping them drop by drop to prolong the suffering of those families and Israeli society and to gain one more achievement to their campaign,” said Gen. Hayman, who is also the managing director of the Institute for National Security Studies, an Israeli policy institute.

Within Israel, the release of the four hostages has brought the painful human drama surrounding the hostage crisis to the fore. The families of the hostages have been urging Israel to negotiate a deal, saying they fear that their relatives could be hurt in the continuing bombing of Gaza.

“I think Hamas, they’re playing a psychological game with us,” said Hadas Kalderon, a 56-year-old from a kibbutz near Gaza, whose two children—a boy age 12 and a girl age 16—and ex-husband were kidnapped.

“I’m very afraid of any military action. I’m afraid for my children. They’re still there in the middle of a war. I’m terrified. Every day they don’t find a solution and don’t talk about a solution, it’s like sacrificing our children.”

Senior Hamas officials have told Arab negotiators that the group doesn’t intend to hold civilian hostages for months. Soldiers held as prisoners of war, however, would only be released in return for the release of the 6,000 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israeli jails, they said.

A senior Hamas official involved in the negotiations told The Wall Street Journal that the militant group has already downgraded their demands and are no longer demanding exchanging foreign women and children for Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons. Instead, the group asked for fuel and aid for Gazans.

The Hamas official said the United Nations would ensure any fuel is directed to hospitals and for civilian use. The U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza said on Tuesday that without fuel it could be forced to completely shut down operations in Gaza, including its shelters for some 600,000 people displaced from the war. U.N. Officials also say the fuel could be delivered directly to the U.N. in Gaza without Hamas’ interference.

To be sure, Hamas likely also wants to rid itself of some of the large group of hostages that are a drain on its fast-depleting resources as the fighting drags out, according to analysts and officials familiar with the negotiations. The militant group didn’t expect to capture such a large group of people, especially civilians in the Oct. 7 raid, according to Hamas and Middle East officials negotiating over the release of the hostages.

“My sense is Hamas—the political and military leadership—want to get rid of the civilian hostages as soon as possible,” said Gershon Baskin, an Israeli negotiator who helped organize a deal between Hamas and Israel that freed an Israeli soldier and more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.

“I just imagine that it’s a huge burden on their logistics when their main objective is to confront the Israelis once the army enters Gaza,” Baskin said.

The release of four hostages in recent days has piled more pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is facing criticism within Israel for the security and intelligence failures that preceded the attack and is now under pressure to strike a deal that would free the hostages.

“There have been many ups and downs in the last weeks over the release of civilians held by Hamas. Every time we thought there was a breakthrough, one side, mostly Israel, backs down at the last minute,” said a senior Egyptian official.

Israel has said that its military operation in Gaza is aimed at removing Hamas from power, but hasn’t said who will take control of the enclave if that goal is achieved.

“They’ve never tried to overthrow Hamas and they’ve never had so many hostages. So I think they’re scrambling to figure out what to do and I think they’re in a serious dilemma,” said Mairav Zonszein, a senior Israel-Palestine analyst with International Crisis Group.

“There’s a small window in which it needs to happen, otherwise it becomes less and less likely to bring them back. There’s already a lot of pressure.”

The release of the two Israeli women, Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, and Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday, also pointed to the complexities of the hostage negotiations, in which both Egypt and Qatar have been speaking to Hamas leaders.

Unlike the release of the two Americans last week, which was brokered by Qatar, the release of the Israelis was organized by Hamas and Egypt’s intelligence service, which is in contact with the group’s military wing in Gaza. Qatar, Turkey and other countries are primarily in contact with Hamas’ political leaders, some of whom live in exile in Doha.

Source » msn.com