Special envoy to Jerusalem
The worst-case scenario was written on Friday evening in the north of the Gaza Strip. On the outskirts of Gaza City, Israeli soldiers killed three of the hostages they were supposed to free. The news stunned the country, then caused a deep incomprehension as the details of the errors that led to this tragedy came to light.
Two of the victims, Yotam Haïm, 28, and Alon Shamriz, 26, were kidnapped from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7. The third, Samer Fouad el-Talalka, a Bedouin, was captured that same day on a farm near Nir Am, where he worked. How the trio got free remains a mystery. It is unknown whether their captors had abandoned them or whether they managed to escape.
The only certainty is that they were shot while trying, as best they could, to identify themselves to the IDF. According to the Israeli army, the three men were wandering in Chajaya, a neighborhood in western Gaza City, the scene of particularly heavy fighting in recent days. They walked shirtless, white flag in hand, asking for help in Hebrew, as night fell, along what remained of the streets in this intensely bombed area. Shooters, hiding on the floors, nevertheless opened fire, killing two hostages immediately. The third managed to escape, according to initial investigations. He then took refuge in a building. Despite his cries for help, always in Hebrew, and the arrival on the scene of a superior officer, he was also killed by the soldiers as he tried to leave again.
According to the army’s initial findings, the soldiers feared that the calls for help were in reality a way for Hamas to lure them into a trap. Their suspicions would have been heightened by the discovery, two days previously, on a nearby building, of an inscription: “Help! Three hostages.” The IDF services had therefore marked this building as the site of a possible ambush. An investigation was opened because these elements indicate that the soldiers involved did not follow the rules of engagement.
For many analysts, the death of these three men is above all a sign of the difficulties encountered by the IDF in recent days and of uncertain combat discipline. Several NGOs, notably Human Rights Watch, have pointed out that, in urban areas, the rules of engagement require that a person be clearly identified as a combatant before shooting. “It was not the case. This reflects the extreme tension that fighters are experiencing in Gaza,” underlines an officer who prefers to remain anonymous. It is significant that this drama took place in Chajaya, one of the districts where the fighting is most bitter. Last Tuesday, nine soldiers were killed there, including a colonel and five officers, in a complex Hamas ambush. On Sunday, two more soldiers fell, bringing the losses suffered by the IDF to 121, almost double the 2014 operation (66). “We cannot compare the scale of this war to that of 2014, when our forces did not intervene more than a kilometer into Gaza,” explains Yaakov Amidor, a former general who is now an advisor to the Jewish Institute for National Security. of America (Jinsa). He emphasizes that the army would have “not found a solution for the tunnels” which allow Hamas to attack the military from the rear. To this sprawling network, which has only strengthened over the last ten years, added assets for the Islamist militiamen include a better knowledge of the terrain and an arsenal that is far from negligible. In particular, they have light drones, relatively modern anti-tank missiles and abundant ammunition.
After two months of offensive, the stated objective, the complete elimination of the terrorist movement, seems far from being achieved. Intense fighting is therefore shaking the north of the Gaza Strip, but also Khan Younes, in the South. Despite an unprecedented aerial bombardment, which caused the deaths of nearly 19,000 civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, the Islamists seem to manage to maintain a kind of coherence and strategy that they expose in propaganda videos on Telegram. The overwhelming advantage, however, remains with Israel. “Hamas can post its strategy and its tactics, but in principle it remains a guerrilla movement,” underlines Alexander Grinberg, of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security.
These explanations, like the announcement of an investigation, have in no way calmed the anger of the families of the approximately 130 people still sequestered by Hamas. Saturday evening, during a large demonstration in Tel Aviv, relatives demanded from the platform an end to military operations which, according to them, endanger the lives of captives, and the resumption of negotiations for a truce. A first break, at the end of November, allowed the release of 110 people, mainly women and children. “We have been warning about the risks for a long time. Unfortunately, events have just proven us right,” lamented Noam Perry, whose father is being held in Gaza. But the shock of this blunder shook well beyond those around the hostages, pushing part of the country to question the strategy followed by the government. In its editorial on Sunday, the major left-wing daily Haaretz demanded that “we learn lessons” from this “serious incident” and that “we change approach, both because of the priority that is the release of the hostages and the nature of the fighting in the Gaza Strip.
Despite everything, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, did not seem, in an intervention on Saturday evening, to want to change his course and deviate from the armed option. During this late speech, more than a day after the events, he affirmed that he wanted to “maintain military pressure” on Hamas, while recognizing and regretting “an error” as well as an “unbearable tragedy”. The harsh criticism of his past lack of discernment, of his conduct of this war and of his lack of empathy towards the victims, further heightened by the death of the three hostages, could force him to change course. He thus suggested on Saturday that an initiative was underway to obtain the release of the captives. Without saying more. However, according to the Wafa news agency, David Barnea, the head of Mossad – the Israeli foreign secret service -, who was banned on Wednesday from going to Qatar to discuss a second phase of truce, would have met on Friday with the first Qatari Minister, Mohammed Ben Abdelrahman al-Thani, in Europe.
The Israeli Prime Minister must also deal, at least on the surface, with pressure from several Western countries. Visiting Israel on Sunday, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs called for a “new immediate and lasting truce”. For their part, Germany and Great Britain called for a “lasting ceasefire” in an article published in the Sunday Times. David Cameron’s words represent a clear change of direction for London: “Our goal cannot be a halt to the fighting today. This must last for days, for years,” writes the head of British diplomacy. In response to the French request, Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen repeated his government’s position, for which a ceasefire is only a “gift to Hamas.”