The endless battle to bring the hostages home has haunted Israel since Hamas brilliantly, mercilessly, and sadistically abducted around 250 Israelis and foreign nationals, most of them civilians, on October 7. Now 134 of them are still waiting to come home.
This crisis has led heartbroken families to seek help from governments worldwide, pleading on humanitarian grounds for the release of their loved ones held by Hamas. Never has the world seen such a spectacle.
The question on everyone’s mind, from the public to politicians, is: At what cost?
Can the army rescue the hostages from Gaza, hopefully alive, while also dismantling terrorist infrastructure in the coastal enclave? Even many Palestinians quietly express shame at Hamas’ brutality.
A six-week truce might return 35 to 40 hostages, but at what cost?
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is under tremendous pressure to agree to a cease-fire from the Biden Administration, Arab countries, and the families of hostages, each citing their reasons. President Biden cannot afford to alienate voters who are critical of Israel’s military operation in Gaza in what promises to be a tough re-election campaign; the US and many other countries cite humanitarian reasons; and as for the hostage families, their reasons are apparent.
But what if, like in the last cease-fire, Hamas breaks the truce, restarting the vicious cycle while hostages remain in their clutches? Meanwhile, with each passing day, the condition of the hostages, and their chance of ever being freed, declines.
Hamas has held the upper hand in negotiating terms throughout the war, gaining numerous Palestinian prisoners in exchange for innocent Israeli civilians. Some claim that not all Palestinian prisoners are guilty of crimes. While that remains to be determined, the point stands: If this deal were to go through, close to 100 hostages would still be left in unimaginable conditions, in tunnels, malnourished, and in a state worse than we can visualize.
Globally, Russia stands accused of abducting tens of thousands—or perhaps hundreds of thousands—of Ukrainian children, leading to an International Criminal Court arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin.
During the 15-year Lebanese Civil War, an estimated 17,000 people were abducted or disappeared, leaving families in a state of perpetual uncertainty and grief. These disappearances were perpetrated by various factions involved in the conflict, often with little regard for the individuals’ rights or the anguish inflicted on their loved ones. Despite the war’s end, the fate of many of these individuals remains unknown, casting a long shadow over Lebanon’s postwar recovery and reconciliation efforts.
In 2014, ISIS abducted thousands of Yazidis, a minority group in Iraq, in a brutal campaign that targeted their communities in Sinjar. The abductions were part of a systematic effort by ISIS, which the UN has recognized as genocide, aimed at eradicating the Yazidi people’s cultural and religious identity. Many of the abducted Yazidis, especially women and children, were subjected to atrocities including enslavement, forced conversion, and sexual violence, leading to international condemnation and calls for justice.
Almost 80 years after the end of World War II, more than 72,000 American soldiers and civilians remain missing in action (MIA), their fates unresolved and their families left to wonder. Likewise, almost 7,500 Americans remain MIA from the Korean War, and nearly 1,600 are still MIA from the Vietnam War. These missing people represent a painful, open wound in the national memory.
Other cases of kidnapping and incarceration have received much less publicity. For example, ISIS kidnapped 160 Kurds in northeast Syria in 2014. The Syria Justice and Accountability Centre recently released a report detailing these unlawful acts, including the 600 Syrians missing in ISIS-controlled areas.
Hostages could be held as bargaining chips for decades
Even if Israel manages to negotiate the release of 35 to 40 hostages now, the remaining 94 to 99 hostages, whether dead or alive, could be used as bargaining chips for decades. Moreover, if any hostages were moved through tunnels to Egypt and from there were moved to hostile entities, including Iran, the resulting situation would surpass even the most imaginative fiction.
A cease-fire should aim for meaningful outcomes, like the total freedom of hostages, to bring closure to all parties to the conflict, rather than being pressured by Ramadan or elections.
Despite the expertise dedicated to finding solutions, negotiations often undervalue the exchange rate between a single Israeli hostage and multiple Palestinian prisoners. An equal trade would have been one prisoner for one hostage. But this never seems to be the starting point of negotiations. Why is the starting point so lopsided?
Would the US give up 10 terrorists imprisoned in its jails for one American hostage?
When the US has engaged in uneven exchanges of prisoners, such as the 2014 release of five Taliban detainees held at Guantanamo Bay for one American soldier, Bowe Bergdahl, who had been captured in Afghanistan, the deal sparked controversy and debate over the precedent it set.
The US has sometimes recovered hostages or prisoners of war not by releasing enemy combatants but in exchange for weapons or money, and this too has generated great controversy.
President Ronald Reagan’s decision to sell arms to Iran, claimed to have been taken as part of a hostage release deal, known as the Iran-Contra Affair, remains one of the most contentious episodes in American political history. In the mid-1980s, the Reagan Administration secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was then embroiled in the Iran-Iraq War and considered a state sponsor of terrorism, in hopes of securing the release of several hostages held by Hizbullah in Lebanon. The proceeds from these arms sales were also covertly diverted to fund Contra rebels fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, in violation of US law that prohibited such aid. When the scheme was exposed, it sparked a political scandal that raised serious questions about the circumvention of congressional authority, the negotiation with terrorists, and the integrity of the executive branch, leading to the conviction of several administration officials. The affair brought to light the complexities and ethical dilemmas of foreign policy and hostage negotiations and left a lasting impact on the Reagan presidency’s legacy.
Allowing Hamas to retain an upper hand in negotiations, such as keeping hostages or their remains, perpetuates the use of civilian kidnapping as a tool of war. Democratic countries should advocate for negotiated solutions that respect the laws of war, treating the kidnapping of innocent civilians as the war crime that it is.
The US Department of Defense Law of War Manual, developed by civilian and military lawyers, outlines wartime rights and duties and should serve as a universal guide in a world where international humanitarian law is frequently ignored, and the plight of abducted or missing soldiers and civilians is often forgotten. Given the scant media attention to missing Syrians and Kurds from heinous conflicts, one must assume that the Israeli hostages are also at risk of being forgotten over time.
After five months of conflict, more than half of the hostages remain concealed in Gaza. Time is running out for implementing a just solution. This is not a piecemeal game.
Felice Friedson is president and CEO of The Media Line news agency and founder of the Press and Policy Student Program, the Mideast Press Club, and the Women’s Empowerment Program. She can be reached at felice@themedialine.org.