AFTER AL-SHIFASecret talks between Hamas, Israel, and the US continue as the war in Gaza drags on
In 1991 I published a book, The Samson Option, about Israel’s then little-known and still officially unacknowledged nuclear arsenal. Israel did have the bomb, lots of bombs, but the real secret the book revealed was the extent to which three American presidents—Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson—had helped the Israelis produce, deploy, and lie about them. No one likes to be the bearer of bad news, but I remain mystified by the ongoing inability of the Biden administration and the Israeli government headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to tell the truth about what may or may not be grim news. Earlier this week, I wrote that there were secret talks going on between Israel and Hamas about the release of hostages. I also wrote that the Israeli military and intelligence community believed there was a network of tunnels and a command-and-control bunker where Hamas had been hiding its hostages under the campus of several buildings at the Al-Shifa Hospital. A knowledgeable American official has since told me that the Israeli intelligence community suspected from the outset of the war that the Hamas tunnel system, as widespread as it was throughout Gaza City, was not going to be the final destination of the hostages. “The tunnels are five-and-a-half feet high and three-and-a-half feet wide, just wide enough for someone with combat gear to get through,” the official said. The big fear was that Hamas may have killed all of the soldiers right away. “Moms and children are valuable. Soldiers are not.” The official added that Israel intelligence “does not know where all the hostages are.” But they do know where some of them were. Israeli intelligence, which has mapped the tunnel system, understood early on that many of the Hamas hostages were at some point hidden in the underground floors of some of the hospital buildings in the Al-Shifa complex. They also learned that at some point the hostages, like the citizens of Gaza City, were moved south in the forced migration that Israel imposed as it continued its citywide bombing of homes, apartment complexes, and office buildings, all suspected for years to have tunnel entrances in their basements. “There is no doubt at all—none,” an Israeli insider told me, “that a large group of hostages, especially the women and the young, were taken to Al-Shifa. Israeli soldiers and medics who have been searching the hospital room to room, bed to bed, have found plenty of evidence of the presence of the hostages—Israeli-made clothing, diapers, milk bottles.” In addition, he said, “DNA from blood on the floors where the Israeli-made items were found was matched to DNA samples taken from family members of the hostages.” The Israeli military has announced the discovery in the past few days of the bodies of two of the Israeli hostages near the hospital complex area. The insider explained that “Israel now also knows that about two hundred Hamas terrorists who entered Israel escaped back to Al-Shifa and were hiding there for about three weeks before heading south.” “Israel believes,” he said, that some hostages “were kept at the Al-Shifa complex for two to three weeks.” When they moved south, “they did so with their faces covered by bandages” to prevent the Israeli surveillance drones from identifying them. The insider further said that Israel knows, with confidence, where the new hiding places, underground of course, are in the south. There is also great Israeli anger, the insider said, at the doctors at the Al-Shifa campus “who helped cover the hostages with bandages and helped to smuggle them out.” It is also known, as has been reported, that some hostages were taken by other terrorist groups and residents of Gaza City who took advantage of the of the sudden opening to Israel to steal, rape, and murder and return home with hostages. The forced migration from Gaza City to the south also included untold thousands of Hamas fighters and their leaders. Combat experts in Washington believe that the infantry tactics of the Israeli army, aided by guidance from Lieutenant General James Glynn, who previously led the Marine Corps Special Forces, were highly effective. Glynn has since returned to the United States. The widespread Hamas tunnel system enabled the officers and fighters of Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, to spend days at work underground and then return home via the tunnel system to have dinner and spend the night with their families. There were thousands of entry and exit points to the tunnel system under apartment and office buildings in Gaza City. The Israelis had mapped the system and thus were able to assassinate many Hamas brigade commanders and their families, in their beds in ways that surprised the senior Hamas command. Most of the surviving Hamas military officers have also fled to the south. It was this knowledge that led Israeli war planners to disregard the laws of war and decide to target every apartment building and office building in Gaza City known to have basement-level access to the tunnel system, despite the huge numbers of civilian fatalities such strikes would entail. That those strikes might constitute war crimes did not matter. The bombing also kept the main force of Hamas fighters locked underground, and vulnerable to the sealing of tunnels and even the potential use of tear gas. Israel then brought in heavy trucks to clear the rubble and create pathways for its tanks and armored vehicles that would control the ground war in Gaza City. Talks between the Hamas leadership and Israel, with support from the United States, are now going on in Qatar. The American team includes CIA Director William Burns, President Biden’s most experienced foreign policy aide. A tentative agreement was reached days ago: Hamas agreed to release fifty women and older hostages in return for the release of hundreds of women and teenage girls of Hamas families who are now in Israeli jails. The United States insisted that the children and family members of any hostage to be released must also be released. The release of a mother without her children who were also captives was not acceptable. The American demand thus called for the release of 71 hostages. There was agreement on that score, but Hamas also insisted on a five-day halt to the war. That was immediately rejected by Netanyahu, who has continued to ignore the increasing anger of the hostages’ families whose rallies and protests are gaining momentum in Israel. Netanyahu and the generals running the war are convinced, the insider said, that “Hamas still hopes to live to fight another day. This is why they insist on long pauses for each group of hostages they release.” At this point—with the war essentially won—the fate of Hamas soldiers still in the bunkers of the north is dire. There is also worry about the teenage Israeli boys who are captives and who are considered from the age of fifteen on by Hamas to be combat soldiers. Most of the Israeli men known to be captured are reservists, who are eligible to be summoned for active duty until they are forty-five. The Israeli insider told me that the Israeli military has taken photos of slain Hamas fighters and has asked the families of those killed on October 7 if they wished to view the photos of the dead bodies in order to bring closure. “Some families want to see the pictures.” the insider said. “Most do not.” |