EDITORIAL – Since the discovery in a Gaza tunnel by the Israeli army of six hostages killed according to it at “point-blank range” by Hamas, the pressure is increasing on Benjamin Netanyahu to reach a truce. But the two camps are blaming each other for the failure of the negotiations, Israel maintaining its armed strategy to free its people.
We could call this the “ syndrome Gilad Shalit “, named after the young French-Israeli soldier kidnapped and taken hostage in Gaza and then exchanged in 2011 for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners including Yahya Sinouar. Twelve years later, he was the mastermind behind the terrorist massacres of October 7 and he is now the political leader of Hamas since the death of Ismail Haniyeh, killed in Tehran in an attack most likely organized by the Israeli services. How far then should we go in the compromise at the risk of releasing new Sinouars? What price should we be willing to pay to recover the hundred hostages still in the hands of Hamas?
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This debate, which has been recurring for years, was rekindled after the Hamas pogrom raid and the murders in atrocious conditions of some 1,200 Israelis as well as immigrant workers and the kidnapping of 240 others. It has become incandescent since the discovery, on 1is September, the bodies of six hostages, four men and two young women, executed with a bullet in the back of the head according to autopsies. Hamas claims that the other hostages too “will find their families in coffins” if the Israeli authorities refuse to conclude an agreement and continue to want to free them through military pressure.
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The two major goals of the war launched in Gaza – the destruction of Hamas and the release of the hostages – are clearly becoming increasingly contradictory. Two visions are clashing on what should be the priority of a democracy. Is the protection of the lives of its citizens more important or the higher interests of the country, particularly security? These hostages that the Hamas terrorists are using mean that the negotiation can last indefinitely. They want to force us into a truce, even a ceasefire, at the end of the war.[…]
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- challenges.fr
