The prospect of a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas appears to be rapidly receding after the far-right Israeli cabinet member Bezalel Smotrich – on whom Benjamin Netanyahu is now reliant after the resignations of more moderate ministers at the weekend – said he would oppose a deal.
Smotrich’s comments, during a Knesset committee meeting, came amid the fallout from the resignation of the former army chief of staff Benny Gantz from the war cabinet. Gantz quit on the same weekend that Israel rescued four Israeli hostages held in Gaza in an operation that Gaza’s health ministry said killed more than 270 Palestinians and injured hundreds more.
The departure of Gantz, the leader of the centre-right National Unity party, leaves Netanyahu with enough seats in his coalition but has made him even more reliant on the support of far-right allies including Smotrich, the finance minister, and Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, who have repeatedly threatened to walk away over any deal for a ceasefire in exchange for hostages.
Smotrich said Hamas was “demanding the release of hundreds of murderers [held by Israel] so that the hostages be freed” and called the deal that was being negotiated “collective suicide”, saying it would lead to the murder of Jews.
“When Hamas demands to end the war while it’s surviving in Gaza, it means that the group is arming itself, digging tunnels, buying rockets and that many Jews could be murdered and taken hostage on another October 7,” Smotrich said.
His comments underlined Netanyahu’s shrinking room for political manoeuvre barely 24 hours after the celebratory headlines in the Israeli media over the hostages’ rescue.
Netanyahu revelled in the operation’s success, meeting each of the hostages as cameras rolled. Recent opinion polls had already shown him making some progress in rehabilitating his image, and the rescue operation will help.
Analysts and commentators were quick to say that the possibility of replicating such an operation for the remaining 120 hostages, at least 40 of whom are believed to be dead, were slim as captives would be guarded more closely, making a negotiated deal even more crucial.
Netanyahu appears to be moving to consolidate his grip on the government amid reports he is considering scrapping the emergency war cabinet in which Gantz served.
Gantz was well thought of by some western diplomats, not least in the US, where he was perceived by the Biden administration as a voice of reason. The US is also concerned about the rising influence of Smotrich and Ben-Gvir.
In further signs of tensions within the coalition, the defence minister, Yoav Gallant, announced he planned to defy Netanyahu and oppose a controversial bill to draft a small number of ultra-Orthodox men into the military.
Columnists in the Israeli press have poured cold water on the notion that the hostage rescue operation removes the necessity for a hostage deal.
“If anyone believes [it] absolves the government of the need to strike a deal, they are living a fantasy,” Nahum Barnea wrote in the widely read Yediot Aharonot newspaper. “There are people out there who need to be saved, and the sooner the better.”
The Israeli army’s spokesperson, R Adm Daniel Hagari, acknowledged the limits of military force. “What will bring most of the hostages back home alive is a deal,” he told reporters.
That view was echoed by the uncle of one of the four rescued hostages, Almog Meir Jan, who was kidnapped during the Nova music festival.
“First we thank the IDF, the special forces, the decision-makers who took the decision to rescue them,” Aviram Meir said, adding that his nephew had been held in several different locations.
“Second, we have another 120 hostages that have to come home. I believe most of them won’t come home in a special operation and we need a deal to bring them home: the dead for burying and the living for recovery. And I think the struggle will continue, and personally, I will be there. Even though Almog came back, personally, I will continue.”
Describing his nephew’s ordeal, he said: “He was fortunate he was with the other two hostages, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov, and they kept each other busy. They studied together languages, and all of them learned Arabic.
“Almog saw a rally of the families’ forum in Tel Aviv with his pictures so he knew that nobody had forgotten him. They took care of one another. They are now a team. They are very close now.”
Almog Meir Jan was held for at least some of the time by Abdallah Aljamal, who appears to have worked as a Palestinian journalist and as a spokesperson for Hamas’s labour ministry and was killed with several other family members during the raid. He had contributed a comment article in 2019 to Al Jazeera.
Linked to the political moves in Israel is how Hamas will interpret recent events, including the hostage rescue mission. Some have speculated that the raid and the high number of casualties may be a blow for the morale of Hamas fighters, while others have suggested Hamas leaders may be more interested in the splits in Israel’s political establishment.
With one senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, on Monday urging the US to put pressure on Israel to end the war, it seems likely that Hamas will redouble its demands for international guarantees on an end to the war and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza rather than be persuaded to accept an interim ceasefire.
“We call upon the US administration to put pressure on the occupation to stop the war on Gaza and the Hamas movement is ready to deal positively with any initiative that secures an end to the war,” Zuhri said.
