From late Friday afternoon, all of Israel was riveted to screens. For hours, the country watched and waited nervously for glimpses of the 13 Israeli and 11 foreign hostages being released from captivity in Gaza, after being snatched by Hamas from their homes on 7 October. Families of the hostages had been begging their government to reach a deal for the release of their loved ones ever since. Now it was here.
Headlines tracked every tidbit of information of their journey from somewhere in the ruins of Gaza, to their crossing into Egypt, then Israel, before being whisked off to hospitals for medical attention. It was the first collective bright spot since that terrible Saturday.
But not everyone could be happy, and those who were happy were simultaneously anguished: more than 200 hostages are still being held in unknown locations, their medical condition also unknown. Some are probably dead, others may yet die. The deal between Israel and Hamas involves the release of 50 hostages over four or five days of a ceasefire, and Israel will release three times as many Palestinian prisoners being held in its jails.
After searing debates last week in Israel over the emerging deal, some Israelis compared the situation to Sophie’s Choice, the 1979 novel by William Styron, later a film, in which the title character must choose which of her two children to sacrifice in a concentration camp; the term has since become a metaphor for unbearable choices. Which hostages would be saved, which would be left, possibly for ever?
Although many Israelis demanded such a deal, even holding a march across the country last weekend, others petitioned for a court to delay the deal, accusing the government of discriminating between “blood and blood” with the partial hostage release. Israel’s high court rejected the petition, declining to intervene in the government’s decision.
Alon Nimrodi, the father of a captured soldier – Hamas will surely hold soldiers for as long as possible – said last Monday: “There’s selection going on here – that’s a very tough word – selection.” He knows the word reminds Israelis of the Nazis at Auschwitz performing selections to decide which incoming prisoners would live (for the time being), or die immediately.
Two ultra-nationalist, rightwing political parties in the governing coalition originally opposed the deal; Religious Zionism insisted that Hamas was desperate for a pause in the fighting in order to regroup and strengthen itself for further fighting, in which more Israeli soldiers would die. That party eventually changed its mind, but the Jewish Power party’s three representatives voted against the deal.
The risks of the terrible choice go beyond the current deal. Israel has made numerous agreements to release Palestinian prisoners in the past. Some revert to their pre-prison ways. Yahya Sinwar is a prime example. One of more than 1,000 released in the 2011 deal in exchange for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, Sinwar went on to become Hamas’s political leader in Gaza; Israel claims he is among the top figures responsible for the 7 October massacres. The legal petition against the latest deal argued that the 2011 hostage-prisoner exchange was directly responsible for the apocalyptic carnage a dozen years later.
Finally, there is the overarching problem with hostage release deals: they prove to the Palestinian militant factions how effective is hostage-taking. In the heat of the moment, every Israeli wants the living hostages back. It’s never the right time to “change the game” in the middle, wrote the petitioners who lost their case in court last week. But in between these crises, there is no change of the general equation or calculus.
In fact, the cycle of unresolved conflict dilemmas leading to life or death crises that raise even worse dilemmas characterises the conflict more broadly. When Hamas rose to power in Gaza in 2007, Israel was faced with a tough choice: tolerate its presence, or take action to try to undermine and contain it? The first could endanger everyone, and the government chose the latter – tightening a closure over Gaza to make life unbearable there, hoping that Palestinian residents would topple Hamas in anger, or at least that the closure could contain the security threat. Neither worked; instead, Israel and Hamas fought a series of wars (what Israelis call “operations,” or “escalations”).
Yet Israel told itself that there was no dilemma. During the first one in late 2008, it was impossible to talk about alternative paths while Israel was at war. During subsequent rounds, in 2012, 2014, 2021, 2022, each time was not the time to talk about changing course. Yet between wars, the same conditions that led to each escalation – Gaza’s isolation, closure, lack of economic or political horizon, authoritarian rule – remained. During each round, and in between, if anyone questioned the policy on Gaza, Israelis said “ein breira” – we have no choice.
Moreover, Gaza itself is a stand-in for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and occupation as a whole. Israel has had choices to make over the decades, not only during a crisis. Palestinians, pinned to the ground by Israel, by their own leadership, by history itself, had choices too, and has them even now – some Palestinians are already weighing those options. In fact, there is no ein breira. As Israel crushes Gaza, it may say “we have no choice” but when the guns fall silent – for a time, at least – at every step there will be more such choices to make.
Should Israel revive the war, as its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has promised? Should Hamas choose the path of total destruction for its cynical power play to dominate Palestinian politics? And perhaps the biggest question of all: should Israelis and Palestinians take the risk of changing the rules of the game, reviving a long-atrophied path of political resolution to head off this hellish fate?
The risks are considerable: peace agreements involve painful concessions and setbacks, and generate violence from spoilers. History has shown that people will die during peace negotiations and even after peace is signed, like the victims of the Omagh bombing after the 1998 Good Friday agreement. And it’s worrying to consider precedent that political concessions are won through intolerable violence.
But people are dying cruelly today; it’s hard to imagine anything worse than the present. We have lived with war for ever, while a comprehensive peace agreement has never been tried.
The alternatives exist: such as an updated version of two states, ideally in a confederation arrangement, offering open borders, built-in security and economic cooperation between the two sides, sharing Jerusalem, and a more hopeful horizon. There is nothing simple about this path; the main winning argument for peace is that a policy of letting the occupation fester has failed.
“Sophie’s choice” remains terrible. But it is still better than ein breira – the lie that there is no choice.
• Dahlia Scheindlin is a Tel Aviv-based political analyst and pollster
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