Fifty Israeli hostages remain in Gaza. Twenty are presumed dead, and President Trump suggested on Sunday that more have passed away. From videos that Hamas has released, it is clear that some of the living hostages are barely alive. They look no different than the Jewish survivors of Nazi concentration camps — although of course they remain in captivity and their survival is very much in doubt.
Hundreds of thousands of Israelis, perhaps even a million, in what they called “a day of stoppage,” demonstrated for the release of the hostages. Protesters throughout the country blocked roads and highways and lit bonfires, while many businesses closed.
Hamas has now offered Israel the same 60-day ceasefire deal it had earlier rejected when Israel and the U.S. had proposed it two months ago. The proposed agreement consists of the release of 10 living hostages and the bodies of 18 that are deceased. In exchange, Israel would release 150 Palestinian prisoners. At the same time, Israel and Hamas would immediately begin to negotiate, through third parties, a permanent ceasefire.
Having obtained the deal it had sought just months ago, Israel has nevertheless rejected the Hamas offer. More specifically, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing ministers have rejected the Hamas proposal. Netanyahu’s own senior military leadership wants the government to accept the deal, arguing that Israel has achieved its military objectives and Hamas no longer poses a serious security threat to the country.
Netanyahu claims that he wants all the hostages released as a condition of a ceasefire and prior to any negotiation. Yet he knows full well that Hamas will not do so, since it would lose all leverage by releasing the hostages. Netanyahu asserts that if Hamas fails to capitulate to his demands, the Israeli military will proceed with the attack on Gaza City that will displace hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, many of whom have already been shunted all over the Gaza Strip.
In addition, as Israel continues to targets in Gaza, it will inevitably destroy facilities like the Nasser Hospital, which it struck this week, and kill more innocent bystanders. And then Netanyahu will issue more statements regretting yet another “tragic mishap” with promises of “a thorough military investigation.”
Netanyahu remains impervious to international pressure, and pays no attention to the increasing surge in domestic Israeli opposition to the war. He continues to insist that his priority is to destroy Hamas, rather than to free the dwindling number of hostages that are still alive. While Steve Witkoff, Washington’s special envoy, has promised that the war will be over before the year’s end, that does not necessarily mean that there will be any hostages alive by that time. And that should be Israel’s priority.
Israel’s critics continue to press for the U.S. to withhold transferring any offensive weapons to Israel until Netanyahu capitulates and terminates the Gaza offensive. Others, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), would go even further by terminating all military assistance to Israel. Neither approach is likely to affect Netanyahu in the near-term. In any event, the proponents of either policy are unlikely to garner sufficient congressional support, much less White House backing, any time soon.
On the other hand, Washington should consider pressing Hamas, as a condition of forcing Israel to accept the ceasefire, that it release all the dead hostages, not only 18 of them, for burial in Israel. The dead may be offering some leverage to the terrorists, but not very much, and certainly not enough to move Netanyahu. In addition, Hamas should allow the Red Cross to visit the living hostages on a regular basis so that they are treated not as concentration camp inmates but as prisoners of war.
Should Hamas accept what is simply humanitarian behavior, Washington should pressure Israel by every means at its disposal to accept the ceasefire proposal immediately and begin negotiations with its arch-enemy so that the remaining hostages can go free.
If Hamas rejects such a plan, Washington should continue its unflinching political and military support for Jerusalem. In addition, Germany should resume arms shipments to Israel, and those countries planning to recognize a Palestinian state should hold off doing so until Hamas agrees to the revised proposal.
By now it is clear that Netanyahu and Hamas are equally cynical and equally prepared to go on fighting, whatever additional human tragedies this war will continue to create. Nevertheless, a proposal that supplements what Israel originally offered and Hamas now accepts, that would bring comfort to the families of all the dead, while reviving the prospects of the hostages that still live, would be difficult to for either side to refuse.
It would force Hamas to contemplate ongoing American support for Israel’s continued effort to vanquish it, should it reject the proposal. And it would force Netanyahu to face the prospect of losing U.S. assistance for his needless war if he is the one to reject it.
For these reasons, it is a proposal the White House and Witkoff would do well to consider and act upon.
Dov S. Zakheim is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and vice chairman of the board for the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He was undersecretary of Defense (comptroller) and chief financial officer for the Department of Defense from 2001 to 2004 and a deputy undersecretary of Defense from 1985 to 1987.
