Reports last week that Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer replaced Mossad Director David Barnea in running the hostage talks with Hamas were a misnomer.
If we are talking about the day-to-day and week-to-week receipt of hostages from Hamas as part of Phase one of the January 19-March 1 deal, Barnea is still running that process to ensure the release of each hostage.
If we are talking about negotiations toward phases two and three of the deal for returning the remaining around 80 live and dead hostages, Dermer has not really replaced the Mossad chief because there is no negotiation, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
The negotiations team sent to Doha this week went several days later than it was supposed to have gone under the hostage deal, and it has been made clear that the team was only sent under pressure by US President Donald Trump and had no mandate. The security cabinet is not even set to meet and establish negotiating positions until Tuesday night.
Rather, the current negotiations and the many complaints against Hamas for “surprising” violations of hostages’ health or dishonoring them with staged appearances (as if anyone thought that a murderous radical sect like Hamas had been treating them well in the Gazan tunnels) are all part of a smokescreen to lead to the negotiations falling apart before they move into Phase two.
If only two weeks ago, many were talking about Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich leaving the government to join Otzma Yehudit party leader Itamar Ben-Gvir in protest over ending the war, perceptions have shifted. Beliefs that Smotrich is going nowhere and Ben-Gvir’s possible return since the IDF will not completely withdraw from Gaza are becoming more prominent.
Many ask if the hostage deal will continue
The biggest questions many observers are asking themselves now are: Will Israel even get back the last 11 hostages due on March 1, and will Israel even get back some of the hostages due on February 22 if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to send clear and repeated signals that there will be no Phase II?
Put differently, if Hamas knows that the IDF will not withdraw from the Philadelphi Corridor and from a 700-1,100 meter Gaza perimeter, what incentive does it have to keep sending back Israeli hostages, even those that are part of the end of Phase I of the deal.
Of course, they are getting Palestinian security prisoners back for each hostage. But near the end of the deal, the value of such prisoners becomes smaller, and the value of each hostage, Hamas’s only “life insurance plan” and leverage to try to get the IDF to complete a Gaza withdrawal, becomes much more significant.
The closer we get to March 1 without even having serious talks about how many hostages will be released per week for how many Palestinian security prisoners, the harder it becomes practically for such continued exchanges to even be feasible.
Also, if talks were expected to start on February 3 about the “Day After” in Gaza, the pushing of Trump’s new ideas about transferring the Gaza population has all but shut down such discussions.
Of course, if lightning strikes and magically the Gazan population decides to leave and other Arab countries agree to take them in, virtually all of the issues will be solved (though it’s unclear what would happen to the hostages.)
But if this does not happen, it means that each day, Hamas’s political control in Gaza is growing, and it is potentially becoming more difficult to inject new parties into Gaza to displace them politically.
So what’s next?
This is still unclear.
It is possible that Netanyahu really does intend to return to war in Gaza or a mini-war of smaller penetrations into specific parts of Gaza with smaller groups of forces – not so different from how the West Bank looks now.
It is also possible that the prime minister will not send the military back into Gaza, for now, to penetrate anywhere but will create an indefinite limbo in which some IDF forces remain at the Philadelphi Corridor and the Gaza perimeter.
On one hand, this would allow Hamas to exert control over 90% plus of Gaza,
On the other hand, they would have to put up with Israel infringing on their “sovereignty” in ways that did not happen before October 7.
Another possibility is that Netanyahu will threaten to continue mini penetrations and airstrikes unless Hamas keeps providing Israel with around three hostages every week.
Hamas might play such a game for a little bit, but after a few months, it would run out of hostages, so it is unlikely that it would keep playing such a game for all that long.
Yet another possibility is that the Saudis offer Israel normalization in exchange for an end to the war and a full Gaza withdrawal but reduce their price regarding a Palestinian state enough that the prime minister is willing to take the deal.
Nothing the Saudis have said has indicated they would make such dramatic concessions, but no one expected the UAE to normalize without any permanent concession toward the Palestinians either – and they did.
This is certainly part of the back story for Netanyahu’s support of Trump pushing for transferring the Gazan population – an even more extreme option to try to get the Saudis to make concessions.
Either way, having Barnea and the Mossad dig into negotiations over phases two and three of the hostage deal is not in Netanyahu’s interest as long as he is not in favor of extending the deal beyond March 1.