Israel should agree to “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza as part of a wider effort to strike a deal for the release of the hostages whom Hamas seized on Oct. 7, Secretary of State Antony Blinken suggested on Friday.
"With regard to humanitarian pauses, again, we see this as a way of further facilitating the ability to get assistance in, to make sure that the resources are in place as well to absorb the assistance coming in, to make sure that it gets to the people who need it," Blinken said in Israel. "We see it as a way also, and very importantly, of creating a better environment in which hostages can be released. And this is a very important piece."
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Those remarks signaled American interest in a transaction that has rumbled through diplomatic circles in recent days. Yet Hamas officials have insisted they will not release any hostages until Israel abandons its military campaign and releases thousands of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphasized that the hostage release is a precondition of any ceasefire.
“Israel refuses a temporary ceasefire that does not include the release of our hostages,” Netanyahu said Friday after meeting with Blinken. "Israel will not enable the entry of fuel to Gaza and opposes sending money to the Strip.”
Hamas seized more than 200 hostages in the course of a rampage across southern Israel in which more than 1,400 people were killed and 5,400 wounded, according to Israeli officials. Their plight has complicated Israeli operations during the war, with their families expressing fear that they will die in the operation and pressing Netanyahu to agree to Hamas’s demand for an “all-for-all” exchange.
“The hostages have to be assumed to be human shields just like Palestinian civilians are, and that means that Israel has to be very careful in its military strikes, which it is,” Abraham Bell, a law professor at Israel’s Bar-Ilan University and the University of San Diego, told the Washington Examiner. “Now there's a school of thought out there that says, ‘Pay the ransom that they demand, and maybe that will get the hostages out.’ I think that most Israelis are skeptical — skeptical that Hamas would honor such a deal and very, very skeptical that it would be worth the price.”
Blinken acknowledged the potential for bad-faith behavior by Hamas. "There are no guarantees about anything as a general proposition, and maybe even more specifically, in the context of the fight against Hamas,” he said. “But we are absolutely focused on getting hostages back and getting them back to their families in safety, and we believe that, among other things, a humanitarian pause could help that effort, could facilitate it.”
Hamas politburo member Ghazi Hamad — who pledged recently that “there will be a second, a third, a fourth” attack of the sort perpetrated on Oct. 7 until the state of Israel is annihilated — insisted that the terrorists would not release anyone unless all of its demands are granted.
“We want to stop aggression and killing and the slaughters on our people,” Hamad told NBC News in an interview that aired Friday. "And after that, we can talk about everything about hostages, about the prisoners, about everything, but first, they have to stop the aggression.”
Yet Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian hinted Thursday at the possibility of a compromise.
"There is talk in Qatar about the idea of truce that could [possibly] lead to extensive transfer of humanitarian aid to Gaza," he said, per Iran’s Fars News Agency media outlet. ”Under the aegis of the truce, we will witness exchange of civilian prisoners between the two sides, which includes the release of all female Palestinian prisoners.”
Iran is the primary patron of Hamas, while Qatar also has allowed senior Hamas officials to operate out of Doha.
“What they're trying to do now is trying to implement a ceasefire to release the civilians,” Foundation for Defense of Democracies research fellow Hussain Abdul-Hussain told the Washington Examiner. “Keeping hostages is a war crime, and this is backfiring on Hamas and really undermining their narrative, their image. … [They also think] any ceasefire will take the momentum out of Israel’s push, going after them. Even if they get a couple of days, they can probably replenish or reorganize. They think if they manage to stop the momentum, then maybe when they resume, things will be different.”
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U.S. officials are trying to craft “practical solutions” to the dilemmas that could arise during such a deal, according to Blinken.
“A number of legitimate questions were raised in our discussions today, including how to use any period of pause to maximize the full humanitarian assistance, how to connect a pause to the release of hostages, how to ensure that Hamas doesn’t use these pauses or arrangements to its own advantage,” he said. “These are issues that we need to tackle urgently, and we believe they can be solved.”