The Prisoner Deal Israel Wouldn’t Make Before October 7

It has been reported that one of Yahya Sinwar’s calculations behind the October 7 attack was his conviction that Israel would never release large numbers of Palestinian prisoners through negotiation alone. If that assessment played a significant role in his decision-making, then Israel needs to examine an uncomfortable history: for years before October 7, there were opportunities to negotiate over prisoners and captives, and Israel repeatedly chose not to explore them seriously.

Sinwar never concealed the importance he attached to Palestinian prisoners. After his own release in the 2011 Gilad Shalit exchange, he repeatedly promised publicly that he would work to secure the release of those who remained in Israeli prisons.

I saw the issue from unusually close range.

From the end of the 2014 Gaza war, I used my back-channel contacts with Hamas to try to negotiate the return of the bodies of Israeli soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin. Later, we learned that Avera Mengistu, an Israeli citizen of Ethiopian origin who was believed to be alive, was being held in Gaza. Hamas was also holding Hisham al-Sayed, a Bedouin Israeli citizen.

My efforts were coordinated first with Lior Lotan and later with Yaron Blum, the Israeli officials responsible for the prisoners-and-missing-persons file. My position throughout was simple: there was no realistic way to bring the four Israelis home except through a negotiated agreement with Hamas.

But the Israeli negotiating position left almost no space for negotiation.

Again and again, I was told there would be no repetition of the Shalit deal. More significantly, the Israeli position was that not even one Palestinian prisoner serving a life sentence would be released. In practice, that meant Israel would not release prisoners convicted of killing Israelis – precisely the category of prisoners whose release Hamas regarded as most important.

I tried to develop alternatives that might make an agreement politically and morally easier for Israel: prisoners suffering from cancer and other serious illnesses; elderly prisoners over 65; prisoners who had already served more than 20 years. There was even a Palestinian prisoner who had been incarcerated for almost four decades, although his case was complicated by the fact that he was an Israeli citizen.

Every proposal was rejected.

At one point I was even asked to telephone Hamas while sitting inside an office at Israel’s Ministry of Defense in Tel Aviv. I met repeatedly with members of the Israeli team. They knew that my Hamas contacts were real and that messages could reach the highest levels.

My principal contact was Ghazi Hamad. He would speak with me before and after his meetings with Sinwar on this issue. I therefore had an indirect but meaningful channel to Sinwar himself.

Still, the Israeli position barely moved. On the soldiers, the Israeli formula was essentially “bodies for bodies.” As for Mengistu and al-Sayed, I came away with the disturbing impression that the Israeli establishment did not believe the two civilians generated enough public pressure to justify paying the price Hamas demanded. An Ethiopian Israeli and a Bedouin Israeli simply did not have the political weight that Gilad Shalit had enjoyed.

Yaron Blum left his position on October 31, 2022. No full-time successor was appointed. I met twice with Prime Minister Netanyahu’s military secretary, Avi Gil, who told me frankly that the issue was near the bottom of his agenda. I also spoke with National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, who told me that he would not be dealing with it.

I continued trying. But by May 2023 I had concluded that there was effectively no chance of reaching an agreement. There was no room for compromise on the Israeli side, and therefore no real negotiation.

Five months later came October 7.

None of this excuses, explains away or diminishes the horrific crimes committed by Hamas that day. The murder and abduction of civilians were crimes for which Hamas bears full responsibility.

But responsibility does not absolve us from examining strategic failure.

If Sinwar concluded that Israel understood only force, we should ask what helped him reach that conclusion. For almost nine years, Israel demonstrated that even when Hamas held two Israeli civilians and the bodies of two soldiers, it would not engage in the kind of painful compromise necessary to bring them home.

The lesson should not be that Israel must accept every demand made by an enemy. It should be that negotiation is not weakness, and refusing to negotiate is not necessarily strength.

Sometimes the refusal to make a difficult deal does not eliminate the price.

It merely postpones it — and makes the eventual price catastrophically higher.