Israel’s dilemma: Regime change or release of hostages
| Is it possible for Israel to do both -- dismantle Hamas and at the same time, recover its hostages? Or will it need to prioritise one over the other?

It is three days since the Hamas attacks on Israel — unprecedented in recent times in their scale and the tragedies they have unleashed.

While the government of Israel failed to anticipate the attacks or deal with them as they unfolded, missing in action, they have been able to since regain command of the situation. The bodies of 1,500 Hamas militants have been found in Israeli territory. At least 900 Israelis have been killed in the attack. The sense of righteous rage in Israel is not surprising.

A blockade of Gaza has been announced. Israel’s defence minister Yoav Gallant called the inhabitants ‘human animals’, while declaring that no food, fuel or electricity would be supplied to the city that had been under Hamas control since 2007. All water supplies have also been cut off. His words, spoken, no doubt, in emotion, will be remembered and might come back to haunt him.

But hopefully, there is also a clinical analysis being conducted of the situation by cooler heads in the Israeli government.

There are two clear objectives they face. The first is the dismantling of the Hamas regime in Gaza. It is difficult to imagine a future where Israel and its people could countenance living next to a territory run by the organisation that attacked them on Saturday. But Hamas is hardly going to leave quietly, and there is no question that massed ground invasion of Gaza would be required to achieve this objective. Lots of casualties on all sides.

The other objective is the recovery of hostages. Hamas, during the course of its attack, has taken large numbers of hostages — said to number 130, although Hamas has also claimed that four of them have since died being caught in airstrikes conducted by Israel. Many of the hostages are women, children and elderly. Hamas has since warned Israel, that any airstrikes conducted without warning given to civilians in Gaza would result in the the killing of a hostage. It is also important to note that some of the hostages were reportedly taken by members of the al-Quds Brigades, the militant wing of a different group, Palestinian Islamic Jihad. As events unfolded on Saturday, there were also reports of ordinary residents of Gaza, casually walking across the border and grabbing hostages from Israel. It is uncertain if custody of all the hostages is controlled jointly or uniformly.

Over 700 people have so far been killed as a result of Israeli airstrikes on Gaza since Saturday. This number can reasonably be expected to go up by orders of magnitude.

We can now expect Hamas to begin publishing videos of hostages — hopefully in reasonably healthy condition, but with the intention of putting pressure on the government of Israel to stop further attacks on Gaza and hold off on a general invasion. The fact that many foreign nationals from countries like the U.S. are also speculated to number among the hostages will further complicate Israel’s options.

It is also going to be no easy task to attempt a recovery of these hostages through special operations. Even if Israel manages to obtain reliable intelligence on their locations, they will be widely dispersed across the 365 sq km of Gaza that contains over 2 million inhabitants, at hidden and heavily defended sites.

Neither objective is easy. Both have enormous emotional appeal. And both are existential for Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu’s survival in office.

There is already growing pressure on Netanyahu to demonstrate command of the situation and display initiative, after Israel’s worst intelligence failure in exactly 50 years. Not only were Israel’s borders with Gaza apparently left poorly guarded, with large numbers of troops reportedly diverted to the West Bank to deal with the security concerns arising out of provocations by Israeli settlers there, who’s leaders prop up Netanyahu’s government, there are now reports emerging that Egypt’s intelligence minister had warned Netanyahu of a major action coming from Gaza ten days back. Warnings that the reports said were ignored, with Netanyahu preoccupied with the West Bank, leaving the Egyptians aghast. Netanyahu’s office has denied that any warning about the attack were given to him.

Netanyahu has already been under siege, politically. While Israeli society dropped its differences immediately and came together on Saturday to defend their country, Israel’s security has not been helped by the divisions created by the Netanyahu government’s moves over the last few months to remove power of judicial review by Israel’s Supreme Court and effectively erase the concept of rule of law. Nor has he been helped by criticism of remarks in 2019 attributed to him calling for strengthening Hamas to prevent Palestinian statehood.

Netanyahu has to demonstrate the initiative and these are the only two possible objectives before him that he could attempt to prove it.

In passing, there are two instances of irony that arise when considering the prospect of the dismantling and removal of the Hamas regime from Gaza. The first is that founding members (like Sheikh Ahmed Yassin) and precursor organisations that eventually came together to form Hamas were funded by Israel, in an attempt to create a rival to the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) led by Yasser Arafat, the successor of which, Fatah, is ostensibly allowed to govern the West Bank.

The second irony is that Netanyahu, having served as prime minister of Israel for over 15 years over various periods, has tended to avoid a ground invasion of Gaza after its takeover by Hamas in 2007.

And while Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his successor Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi in 2004, Prime Minister Netanyahu had ordered the assassination of Khaled Mashal in 1997, which failed, and Mashal later succeeded al-Rantisi, leading Hamas to victory in the Palestinian legislative election in 2006. He stepped down from the leadership of Hamas in 2017 and has since lived in Qatar. Since then, Ismail Haniyeh has been the political leader of Hamas, also living in Qatar.

The militant wing of Hamas, the al-Qassam Brigades, which often operates independently of the political organisation, are led by Marwan Issa and Mohammed Deif. Deif is reported to have been involved in the abduction and killing of three Israeli soldiers in 1994. He became the leader of the al-Qassam Brigades in 2002 after Israel assassinated his predecessor. Deif is said to have survived seven assassination attempts, losing an eye and a part of his arm. His wife, infant son and toddler daughter were reportedly killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2014. The last time Israel tried to assassinate him was in 2021, when Netanyahu was prime minister.

Hamas leaders have been assassinated in the past and it is not likely that another decapitation strike, even if successful, would be sufficient for dismantling its regime and removing it from control of Gaza.

Israel has frequently suffered the abduction of hostages by Palestinian terrorists throughout its history. The Munich Olympics massacre in 1972, which resulted in the deaths of 11 Israelis, is the most infamous instance. Netanyahu’s brother Yonatan commanded the Israeli operation to rescue 94 Israelis and 12 crew members of an Air France airliner hijacked by Palestinian terrorists and brought to Entebbe in Uganda in 1976. Yonatan Netanyahu was the only Israeli commando killed in the rescue operation. Four hostages, including the 74-year old Dora Block, who had been taken to a Ugandan hospital for treatment and was away from the site of the rescue mission at the time, were killed.

A purely military solution seems unlikely to be conceivable given the current circumstances and is likely to result in casualties and losses among the hostages. Given the preponderance of outcomes in the past, it is unlikely that Israel can achieve their release without go-between countries like Egypt, Qatar and even the EU, which reversed its suspension of aid to Gaza, likely because of the leverage it provides. Qatar is already said to be involved in talks for the release of the Israeli women and children. But for this kind of mediated release of hostages, Israel might have to hold off on pursuing regime change and allow for the survival of Hamas, at least for the time being.

This is possibly the best that can be made of a bad situation. Hopefully, it will be enough to save the lives of the hostages. It’s not clear if it will be enough to save Netanyahu’s chair, despite his invitation to opposition parties to form a government of national unity.