“Mixed feelings” is an easy way of describing the mood in Israel as a ceasefire takes effect in Gaza and hostages begin returning home after more than a year in Hamas captivity.
Easy because it’s obvious. Less obvious are the dangerous possibilities and, conversely, the positive potential.
Those opposite poles are rebuilding Hamas or involving Saudi Arabia.
What Israeli, what Jew, what right-minded person can help but join in the joy of welcoming the hostages home, though it’s known that many of them are no longer among the living, and it’s probable that some of the living are damaged, physically and spiritually, beyond repair.
Yet there is also a case to be made that this painful, staged process amounts to surrender to the Hamas terrorists who streamed across the Gaza border into Israel on October 7, 2023, killing, raping, and burning more than 1,000 Israelis and hauling more than 200 into captivity in dark, dank underground dungeons.
Though the last phase of the three-stage accord mandates freedom for all the remaining hostages, there is no guarantee that it will happen. In November 2023, such a process had already begun, but it was stopped in the middle because of truce violations.
That might well happen again, especially when neither side can be trusted to conclude that fulfilling the terms of the ceasefire accord is in their best interests.
This process will unfold in front of the world’s cameras for months if it goes ahead as agreed. Every Saturday, a few more hostages will be released. First, the live captives will come home. Then the bodies will come. Israel’s leaders, especially Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, are likely to get a popularity boost with the return of the livehostages. That probably won’t continue when the bodies start coming back.
On the Palestinian side, there will be victory marches and wild celebrations greeting the prisoners freed by Israel in exchange for the hostages. Rationally, it’s hard to imagine a victory dance after the death and destruction in Gaza brought about by the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7, but rationality has never been the strong suit of the Palestinians.
They have traded on their victimization for decades, automatically blaming all their hardships on Israel.
There are legitimate fears that the thousands of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted murderers and terrorist leaders, to be freed in exchange for the hostages could replenish the Hamas ranks decimated by Israeli military operations over the past year-plus. That has happened before.
So, besides the return of a few dozen, even all 97 of the hostages, what could possibly be positive about this?
Optimism requires a longer and wider view.
The long view is the reconstruction and rule of post-war Gaza. Netanyahu has failed to produce a program for administering Gaza after the war. Instead, he has put forward a list that resembles the Arab “three noes of Khartoum” from 1967—no Hamas, no Palestinian Authority, no replacing Israeli security control.
That creates a vacuum that must be filled. The new Trump administration in Washington might step in there. Donald Trump has close ties with Saudi Arabia, and even before taking office, his circles talked about expanding the Abraham Accords to include the Saudis. (In their first term, Trump’s people helped negotiate the Abraham Accords,peace agreements between Israel and several Arab nations—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco.)
Saudi Arabia, the leader of the majority Sunni Muslim world, could direct an administration in Gaza that could help stabilize the area.
There would be a price. Israel would have to acknowledge the goal of the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. That is poison to a large segment of Israel’s electorate—though it is meaningless. The Palestinians have shown time and again that they do not want peace with Israel. They have turned down detailed Israeli offers of a Palestinian state in the equivalent of the whole West Bank and Gaza, a corridor to connect the two, and parts of Jerusalem.
Clearly, what the Palestinians want is peace without Israel. The October 7 Hamas massacres and their widespread support among Palestinians and their supporters abroad are just the latest proof of that. A coalition led by Saudi Arabia and Egypt—which has a peace treaty with Israel—could overcome the “Palestinian state” obstacle by giving it the lip service it deserves and then dropping it.
Netanyahu and his backers cannot accept even that. They have been rejecting the concept of a Palestinian state for too long. So, the Israeli people would have to choose whether they want their country to continue to say no or trust the process toward a new era where Israel is allied with moderate Arab nations to confront the realenemy—Iran.
That’s the wider view. Israel has pummeled Hamas and Hezbollah in Gaza and Lebanon.
Both are proxies of Iran. So are the Houthis of Yemen, who continue to attack shipping through the vital Bab el Mandeb Straits, supposedly in support of the Palestinians.
Israel’s counteroffensives have weakened Iran.
But Iran is not an Israeli problem. Shiite Muslim Iran is a challenge to the West and the moderate Sunni Arab nations. A Saudi-led coalition, with Israeli and Western involvement, could neutralize Iran diplomatically, militarily, or both. Israel would be among the winners.
One day, the coalition might impose a settlement between Israel and the Palestinians, drawing a border and ordering withdrawals and accommodations. Hopefully, by then, Israel would be on board with the new era and its benefits, following a new domestic leadership that rejects ideological extremism and instead looks pragmatically at the future.
Mark Lavie has been covering the Middle East for major news outlets since 1972. His second book, Why Are We Still Afraid?, which follows his five-decade career and comes to a surprising conclusion, is available on Amazon.