By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The One Person Who Is Blocking The Release Of Israeli Hostages

Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader, is blocking a deal to release Israeli hostages, the Biden administration has said.

An agreement to release the 133 hostages depended on “one guy”, an unnamed official said, in a change of tone from previous White House statements that have suggested that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, is delaying the process.

It came as 18 world leaders, including Rishi Sunak and Joe Biden, signed a joint letter urging Hamas to release the captives it has held for more than 200 days.

Last week, U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer accused Qatar of blocking negotiations with the Hamas leader, essentially abusing its role as a mediator. He was the fifth lawmaker to urge Congress to scrap Qatar’s status as a major non-NATO ally granted to the Arab nation in 2022.

“Qatar needs to make it clear to Hamas that there will be repercussions,” Hoyer said in a statement. Earlier this month, Republican Sens. Ted Budd, Joni Ernst, and Rick Scott introduced a bill that would require the United States to conduct a review to “terminate the designation” if Qatar didn’t expel or extradite Hamas’s leadership, “including Ismail Haniyeh, Khalil al-Hayya, Khaled Mashal,” its biggest leaders.

While Israel expects Qatar to convince Hamas to release hostages and then intends to resume the war to eliminate the group from Gaza, Qatar finds merit in Hamas’s demand of a permanent cease-fire. This is the crux of the disagreement between Qatar and Israel.

“I don’t think it’s an unreasonable request,” said an Arab official familiar with the negotiations. “If they release all hostages, they want an end to the war.”

However, the Israeli security community suspects that’s not all Hamas wants. They argue it could have achieved an end to the war had it agreed to disarm and leave Gaza. Israelis fear that Hamas wants to return to Gaza, victorious, and carry out more attacks that match the cruelty of Oct. 7.

“We can’t hand Hamas a victory,” said Eran Lerman, a former Israeli deputy national security advisor. “After what they have done, we refuse to live with Hamas as our neighbors. And it’s not just Netanyahu, but there is wide support for the policy to eradicate Hamas.” Israel is ready to offer only a temporary truce until Hamas has been vanquished.

Doha makes the case that since the war has limited its ability to send aid to Gaza, it simply doesn’t have the kind of leverage it once did over Hamas’s leaders holding the hostages inside Gaza.

“Sinwar will rather die inside Gaza than agree to a deal to leave,” said an Arab official aware of the negotiations, referring to Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader within Gaza who was behind the Oct. 7 attack. “This is the mistake—this is what Israelis are not understanding.”

He said that threatening to kick out Hamas’s political leaders from Qatar will not bring the desired pressure on Hamas. Sinwar, who is making the final decisions about the hostage negotiations, doesn’t care about his group’s political representatives or where they live, “whether in Qatar, Turkey, Oman, or Iran.”

Israel also doesn’t care where Hamas’s leaders reside and has already declared that it will hunt them down wherever they may choose to hide. But Israeli leaders say that in the short term, they are focused on bringing back the hostages and eliminating Hamas.

Lerman said that Egypt has already been partly involved in negotiations, noting that it could become a single point of communication with Hamas if Qatar doesn’t succeed in mediating the release of the hostages in exchange for a temporary truce not a permanent cease-fire. “It’s not like we won’t be left with a channel of communication,” he said. “If Qatar cannot live up to its claim, that it has leverage over Hamas, then what’s the point?”

Some in the Israeli security community believe that once the long-expected Rafah operation has been successfully carried out and all of Gaza brought under Israeli occupation, Hamas’s leaders and members would be in for a run for their lives and more inclined to accept a deal on Israeli terms.

“Hamas will feel a very different kind of threat than they feel now—that will change their minds,” Lerman said.

It’s a tricky gamble. If Qatar walks out, Israel risks losing a mediator with more influence over Hamas than any other Arab state, and if Doha fails in ensuring safe hostage release, it may damage its ties with the United States. Thus far, neither side is willing to concede, and negotiations will likely go down the wire, further procrastinating the homecoming of the more than 130 Israelis believed to remain in Gaza.

Families of hostages have said that they want their loved ones released “despite the difficult price,” but they also don’t want Hamas to live next door, preferably.

“I prefer if there is a solution,” Gilboa said. “Maybe Hamas’s leaders can move to Qatar and live there.”

 

 

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