By Eliyahu Ben Elisar
It’s important to understand that the agreement for the release of all living hostages wasn’t free — not even close. To obtain the Muslim pressure that helped neutralize Hamas and free the hostages, Israel committed to a lot under the agreement and gave up many demands and positions. I’m not inventing anything here — I’m simply quoting the clauses of the 20-point plan that Israel signed onto:
1. Israel waived any principled demand to govern the Gaza Strip, let alone to annex it.
2. Israel explicitly recognized the Palestinian Authority as the body entitled to govern Gaza, subject to reforms.
3. Israel again acknowledged that the political horizon is a two-state solution.
4. Israel committed to transferring the Gaza Strip to the states that applied this effective pressure (Turkey, Qatar, Egypt…), even if Hamas refuses to disarm. In fact, this applies even if Hamas delays the release of the hostages.
These concessions and commitments mean that even if we convince the Americans that Hamas must be eliminated in Gaza by force and that Israel should carry it out, that will only bring closer the moment when Gaza will have to be handed over to a multinational force made up of explicitly hostile states (Turkey! Qatar! Egypt!), and the process of rebuilding Gaza under their control will begin.
You could say the agreement has more holes than cheese. You could say it will never be implemented. You could say it can be softened. You could say it’s a ruse in which we’re coordinated with the Americans behind the Turks’ and Qataris’ backs. You can say many things — but bottom line: if we defeat Hamas now, then without a shadow of a doubt we will soon have to transfer Gaza to hostile international actors, or face Trump’s fury — he put the full weight of his office behind the agreement we asked him to push.
Trump offered us Gaza without all those prices, but we said that without the hostages there’s nothing to discuss — “thanks, but no thanks.” So now, you can’t pretend the hostages came for free.
Under these conditions, Israel is being pushed into what we saw yesterday: cycles of fighting, and the preservation of Hamas rule as an Israeli interest — so we don’t slide into the much worse alternative of Erdoğan’s rule. There are no free lunches.