If Israel Is Already in Talks With Hamas, It Should Start Thinking Outside the Box - Opinion - Haaretz.com
A strange dialogue is taking place between Israel and Hamas. Every day, if not every hour, messages are exchanged between Jerusalem and the Gaza tunnels about the release of the Israeli hostages, their age, and their gender and how they will be brought back home, and about which Palestinian security prisoners will be released from prison in Israel.
Even if the communication is routed through mediators like Qatar, Egypt and the United States, there is no difference between these talks and earlier dialogues that Israel and Hamas engaged in over prisoner releases, cease-fires and reconstructing Gaza.
But, in contrast to previous negotiations, this time Israel is openly saying that when the talks are over, it plans to eliminate its interlocutor – to deny it the means to rule over Gaza and to kill its leaders. It is hard to think of a similar situation, not only vis-a-vis Israel, in which one side says it plans to get rid of the other side at the same time that it has succeeded in reaching an interim accord with that side.
It is clear why Israel needs to continue pursuing negotiations. The question is why Hamas is prepared to do the same, knowing that when the talks reach their conclusion, there will be nothing to stop Israel from acting on its promise.
After all, according to the “guaranteed elimination” formula, the pressure and leverage of Qatar and Egypt are only effective as long as Hamas believes it can continue to survive. Without this prospect, Israel’s working assumption that more force, more killing, and more destruction will cause Hamas to free the hostages is not convincing.
Even if we accept that the blow to Hamas’ infrastructure and its commanders, and its need for a cease-fire, left it no choice but to open negotiations on releasing the hostages, at some point it will decide that the remaining hostages no longer serve as a human shield, and they will become superfluous.
Israel will then need to make a difficult decision: Either to abandon the remaining abductees and write them off as casualties of war or to continue with open-ended talks while leaving large forces in Gaza, cover the cost of tens of thousands of homeless evacuees and undertake the thankless task of restoring the economy.
The government’s decision to negotiate with Hamas to begin with testifies to its understanding that it has no right to give up on rescuing the hostages, a goal that has taken top priority in the war and the only one to show any concrete results.
Israeli troops walk past destroyed buildings along the Salaheddine road which links the northern Gaza Strip with the south in the Zeitoun district on the outskirts of Gaza City on November 28, 2023.Credit: MAHMUD HAMS - AFP
No killing of a “top official” or destruction of a strategic tunnel compares with the sense of relief and joy felt by the children and elderly who can return home. Public sentiment dictated, and rightly so, that the operation in Gaza had to be suspended, even if for a short period, in favor of the freeing of the hostages.
But as decision time approaches, and the options available cannot guarantee results, we must examine options other than a resumption of fighting or endless negotiations. In August 1982, we signed an agreement under which the Palestine Liberation Organization agreed to quit Lebanon. The PLO leadership and thousands of fighters, under international protection and U.S. guarantees, decamped to Tunisia.
We cannot be certain that this precedent could work in Gaza, too, and that the Hamas leadership and its fighters will agree to go into exile, or that there is any Arab country that would be prepared to take them. But we must investigate this option as one of the morning-after scenarios.
True, it will not mean the end of Hamas, as it will continue to exist outside Gaza. But it will no longer have the territorial control it so badly needs to wage war against Israel.
The formidable diplomatic coalition that has been formed to negotiate the release of the hostages is an asset that can be taken advantage of in order to at least try to initiate such a move. It would both free the hostages and remove Hamas from Israel’s border.