From Tablet Magazine, October 9:
Iran-backed terror army threatens to execute hostages on live broadcasts, after massacring nearly a thousand civilians inside Israel
The hundreds of Hamas fighters who carried out a murderous rampage inside Israel over the weekend returned to the Gaza Strip with an invaluable new strategic asset. On Sunday, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, told journalists that the Islamist group had captured “dozens” of hostages with American citizenship. If this number is even remotely accurate, the assault would be the largest mass abduction of Americans since the Tehran embassy crisis of 1979.
Hamas has likely divided those hostages across unmapped underground sites throughout Gaza, foreclosing the possibility of a single, swift rescue operation. The hostage issue threatens to inject a future source of divergence into Israeli and American objectives during the crisis. Outgoing House Speaker Kevin McCarthy listed “rescue all American hostages” as the U.S.’s top priority in the unfolding war.
Israel must now weigh the survival of American hostages against neutralizing active threats against other groups of civilians, and also against the country’s stated war aim of disarming Hamas, which would likely require a massive ground operation in which most if not all of the hostages would be killed. Hamas, meanwhile, can parade American corpses through downtown Gaza and claim that they are victims of the Israeli assault.
“Hamas will use the hostages in two ways: as human shields and as a source of leverage over Washington,” explained Michael Doran, director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute and a former senior director on the National Security Council. “As human shields they will prevent Israel from destroying critical infrastructure. As a source of leverage, Hamas will convince Washington to compel Israel to make concessions—on the terms of a cease-fire, the release of prisoners, relaxing economic restrictions on Gaza, delivering payments from abroad, etc. Hamas will parade American hostages before the cameras to beg Washington to bring a halt to Israeli military operations so that the hostages can gain their freedom.”
The ways in which American hostages complicate the conflict hardly ends there. The tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar served as the laundering mechanism for $6 billion in unfrozen Iranian oil money that the U.S. used to purchase the freedom of five American citizens or green-card holders that the Islamic Republic had imprisoned, a transaction announced only last month. Doha also happens to be where much of Hamas’ exiled high command lives. Qatar, Washington’s chosen middleman for hostage diplomacy with Iran—which is Hamas’ leading state sponsor—can claim it runs an existing and effective channel for negotiating the hostages’ freedom. Any apparent progress on this diplomatic track could provide the Americans with an incentive to restrain any Israeli operation in Gaza.
Jason Poblete, one of the U.S.’s leading lawyers working on behalf of American hostages, told Tablet it is likely that officials from the U.S.’s Special Operations Command are already in Israel, weighing their options and waiting for further instructions. Poblete explained that when Americans are held hostage, an entire policy infrastructure springs into action—one that includes the State Department special envoy for hostage affairs, the FBI, the military, family engagement coordinators, and the intelligence community. “There’s a whole mechanism behind the scenes that was already working” when Erdan made his vague statement about hostage numbers Sunday morning, Poblete said.
It is the impression of policymakers in Washington that Israeli security planners believe Hamas can be convinced to release children and the elderly from captivity without major preconditions, meaning there is some degree of existing Israeli buy-in for any hostage negotiations that might already be taking place. The presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier positioned offshore may suggest that the U.S. is actively weighing some sort of operation to rescue its citizens, or at least wishes to project a willingness to do so....
....MUCH MORE
Depending on how events develop, the story of Arkady Katkov may be instructive.
