Preventing tomorrow’s hostages

Israel is today mourning the deaths of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lubnov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi, captives taken and held by Hamas for 11 months and murdered by their captors just days ago. For those who feel this awful news could not get worse, know this: It could.

Here’s headline news that did not happen:

Five Hamas terrorists in a white Toyota pickup burst through the Gaza border fence near Kibbutz Nahal Oz, in a small-scale reprise of October 7. Three took up positions against the fence of a nearby kibbutz. Two entered the elementary school and took students hostage.

This scenario was the basis of an Israeli army drill one day in August. Army drills deal with realistic scenarios, not with “unknown unknowns.” Visitors to the kibbutz in question on that August morning could see plastic figures representing the terrorists on the fence opposite the kibbutz school, as army trucks streamed into the kibbutz to respond to the entirely realistic “attack.”

It is entirely realistic for Hamas to assemble a band of five terrorists to cross the border fence into Israel, guns blazing, for another hostage-taking. Biden may be right that Hamas lacks the power to repeat October 7th, but it maintains substantial support among the Gazan population. Informed sources tell me that many Gazans volunteer to observe IDF movements and report on them to the remaining Hamas leadership. Despite the dismantling of most Hamas brigades, isolated bands of terrorists can organize and mount attacks like the one in the IDF drill.

If Hamas has the motivation and the power, why has this type of attack not occurred yet?

The answer is the ugly reality in the Gaza Strip, the reality that led to the death of the hostages. This reality begins with the many lines of defense that the IDF has set up inside Gaza, amounting to a de facto occupation. Any hostage deal that would have saved Hersh, Eden, Ori, Alex, Carmel, and Almog would necessarily have dismantled these lines of defense.

The first line of defense is along the border between Gaza and Egypt. That strip of 14 kilometers (8.7 miles) is perforated by hundreds of tunnels below ground through which Hamas has continually resupplied itself with weapons over the last several years. The Egyptian border guards are aware of these tunnels and are well-paid by Hamas to ignore them. Furthermore, it is no secret that popular support for Hamas in Egypt is high, and the Egyptian regime has no incentive to close down this weapons trade, which provides income for so many poor Egyptians. Today, the border between Gaza and Egypt, called the Philadelphi Corridor, is controlled and patrolled by the IDF, who exploded more than 50 tunnels in the month of August alone.

The second line of defense is the “Netzarim Corridor.” Running parallel to the Philadelphi Corridor, but 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) to its north, it divides the Gaza Strip in half, separating Gaza City from the areas to its south. Gaza City is now largely depopulated, with only 200,000 inhabitants in a city that used to count four times that number. The Netzarim Corridor, a strip of land nearly three kilometers (1.86 miles) wide, is occupied, controlled, and patrolled by IDF forces who prevent the movement of Gazans from the areas to the south back into Gaza City. By controlling this movement, the IDF prevents Hamas from regrouping in Gaza City, the part of Gaza closest to Israeli population centers like Sderot, Ashkelon, and many of the larger kibbutzim clustered on the Israeli side of the fence opposite Gaza City.

The third and ugliest part of the reality is the “kill zone,” called the “perimeter” in polite language. The perimeter is a strip of land a kilometer (0.62 miles) wide, that hugs the Gaza fence on the Gaza side of the border. Israel has destroyed all built structures in this border zone, which runs along the entire 40 kilometers (some 25 miles) length of the Gaza-Israel border fence. Informed sources tell me that any Gazan who comes within a kilometer of the fence is warned off by warning shots fired from the Israeli side of the fence. Any Gazan who approaches closer to the fence is liable to be shot dead. Hamas is continuously sending scouts to test Israeli reactions to Gazans approaching the border fence, probing Israeli defenses, in the hope of finding weak points where a cross-border attack on a single kibbutz or settlement, like the one described above, might have a chance to succeed.

Each of these methods of defending against Hamas is brutal in reality and in description. The word “occupation” has become a black mark on Israel’s reputation. But ugly as this reality is, it is the only alternative to the parallel reality: successful Hamas attacks on Israeli border towns. No one believes that the Israel-Gaza border fence will perform any better today than it performed on October 7th, when it was breached in 119 spots, according to fresh data, by 6,000 Gazans. And while the nearly 11-month war has denied Hamas the ability to organize an attack in so many different places, Hamas can still mount a more limited attack.

Each of these methods are at stake in the current hostage negotiations. Hamas desperately wants to rid itself of each of these three elements of occupation, and demands that Israel dismantle them in return for freeing some of the hostages. Netanyahu is accused of preferring to keep the Philadephi Corridor instead of freeing hostages, as though this were an immoral preference.

The key moral point at issue is: Does Israel have the right or the obligation to prevent future hostage-taking, at the cost of not freeing the hostages currently held? This is a “Sophie’s choice” that no sane person should want to confront. But it corresponds to the ancient Jewish principle governing the principle of freeing hostages. Throughout the Middle Ages, hostage-taking was a constant fact of life in both Western Europe and the Mediterranean, and so Jewish ethicists developed a principle: one does not pay hostage-takers more than the “accepted rate” to free hostages. This principle is governed by a consequentialist type of moral logic: one cannot free today’s hostages at an exorbitant ransom, thus encouraging hostage-takers to repeat their misdeed and kidnap more hostages. Jewish ethicists sacrificed their own lives for this principle, with Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg being the most famous example. In 1293, he died as a hostage in an Alsatian fortress, having forbidden the Jews of the Rhineland from paying a large ransom for his freedom. He sacrificed himself to deter and prevent future hostage-takings.

What would happen if Israel eliminated its occupation of Gaza and dismantled each of the methods of defending against Hamas attacks, which Hamas has set as the price for the hostages’ freedom? Is there any reason to assume that the scenario described in the army drill above would not become a real headline?

Absent more robust international support, which would allow Israel to feign a withdrawal and then re-occupy these positions, we have only two choices. We can free hostages and accept that we will continue to endanger Israel’s border communities, or we can accept the ugly reality now at play on the Gaza border: no hostage deal, occupation of the Philadelphi and Netzarim Corridors, and a kill zone on the Gaza side of the fence. The only bright side to that ugly reality is that there would be no hostage-taking in the dozens of schools that started classes today on the Israeli side of the Gaza border.