Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, his Family, and Friends of the Gaza Strip, are suing Israel to secure the release of his grandchildren and daughter-in-law
TEL AVIV, Israel — Shmuel Brodutch sits under a tent outside Israel’s military headquarters every day now, with one demand of his leaders: to strike a deal with Hamas for the release of his three young grandchildren and daughter-in-law.
The United States wants a pause in the Hamas-Israel war in order to allow for the release of hostages who were taken inside Gaza during the deadly Hamas massacre in southern Israel.
In 2011, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to a swap with Hamas, releasing more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel in exchange for the release of captive Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who was held by Hamas in Gaza for five years.
Israeli ground troops were able to free one hostage soldier after their incursion into Gaza, but it’s unlikely troops can free hundreds of others, with Hamas believed to be holding them in their labyrinth of underground tunnels and chambers.
A recent opinion poll found that many Israelis support a prisoner exchange. Another poll found split opinions but no overwhelming opposition.
“If the army will go to free them, a big percentage of them will be dead. I don’t want to get my grandchildren back as corpses,” Brodutch said of his grandchildren, who are four, eight and 10 years old.
“I miss my brother with all my heart, but we know that a ceasefire and prisoner exchange is destructive for our children’s future,” and could lead to another Oct. 7 style attack, she said in a recent video.
The main group representing family and friends of the Israeli hostages has formed a massive advocacy effort. The group has been careful not to adopt an official position on how Israel should secure their release.
“We’re not busy telling government or any other officials how to do that,” said Shiri Grosbard, whose colleague, Sasha Trupanov, was taken hostage. “We just want them to stay here.”
But the families have been ramping up pressure on the Israeli government, demanding meetings with Netanyahu and accusing the government of not prioritizing their loved ones’ release over Israel’s military bombardment on Gaza, which has claimed the lives of at least 10,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
Over six thousand inmates are being held in Israel for security offenses. That includes about 560 serving life sentences for the killing of Israeli civilians and soldiers over the decades, according to Qadoura Fares, a Palestinian official in the West Bank who oversees prisoners’ affairs. There are some 650 women and 250 children among them.
“It’s the most despicable murderers that massacred and killed Jews for years, for decades,” said Yohanan Plesner, director of the nonpartisan Israel Democracy Institute. “But at the same time, we have never dealt with such a situation of of so many Israeli hostages, so many innocent Israelis, youngsters, kids, that are held in captivity.”
He said he believes Israelis “will be willing to go very far in order to get them released, short of one important goal, which is, it’s not instead of the goal of dismantling Hamas.”
Some factions had signed accords with Israel, meant to pave the way for a two-state solution. The Palestinian Authority wasn’t a full government, but it was still committed to negotiating an end of the conflict.
The beginning of history was altered in 1948, when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were expelled from their homes as a result of the war surrounding the foundation of the Jewish state.
Osama Hamdan, a leader of the Hamas movement, told The Times that that was a turning point. Instead of firing rockets over issues in Gaza, Hamas was fighting for concerns central to all Palestinians, including those outside the enclave. The events also convinced many in Hamas that Israel sought to push the conflict past a point of no return that would ensure the impossibility of Palestinian statehood.
When Mr. Sinwar became the overall head of Hamas in Gaza in 2017, he sometimes projected an interest in accommodation with Israel. In 2018, he gave a rare interview to an Italian journalist working for an Israeli newspaper and appealed for a cease-fire to ease the suffering in Gaza.
“I am not saying I won’t fight anymore,” he said. I say that I do not want war anymore. I want the end of the siege. You walk to the beach at sunset and you see all these teenagers on the shore chatting and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like,” he added. “I want them free.”
The Security Establishment of Israel: The Palestinians, Hamas, Sinwar and the Israeli-Iran Relations in a Second-Order War
Hamas also issued a political program in 2017 that allowed for the possibility of a two-state solution, while still not recognizing Israel’s right to exist.
Israel granted some concessions, agreeing in 2018 to allow $30 million per month in aid from Qatar into Gaza and increasing the number of permits for Gazans to work inside Israel, bringing much needed cash into Gaza’s economy.
The Israelis only cared about how to get rid of the Palestinian cause. Mr. Hamdan said it was a good thing. The people were going in that direction and not thinking about the Palestinians. The Palestinians could have resisted, and all of that could have happened.
Still, in 2021, Israeli military intelligence and the National Security Council thought that Hamas wanted to avoid another war, according to people familiar with the assessments.
Many in Israel’s security establishment also came to believe that its complex border defenses to shoot down rockets and prevent infiltrations from Gaza were enough to keep Hamas contained.
Western analysts say that by the middle of October, Hamas had 20,000 to 40,000 fighters and 15,000 rockets with components likely smuggled in through Egypt. The group had mortars, anti-tank missiles and portable air-defense systems as well, they said.
Mr. Sinwar had also restored the group’s ties to its longtime backer, Iran, which had frayed in 2012, when Hamas shuttered its office in Syria, a close Iranian ally, amid Syria’s civil war.