There are Two Ways to End the War and Bring the Hostages Home

Currently there are only 2 ways to end this damn war and bring home all the hostages. Neither of those 2 ways is through Doha or Cairo, and neither of them contain those horrible interim agreements which release some of the hostages in phases and leave too many behind to rot and die.

Allow me to refresh your minds as to the 3 main reasons that Netanyahu doesn’t want to end the war. Ending the war…

1. Will mean early elections which Netanyahu doesn’t want at all. He needs as much time to rehabilitate his political image and his legacy as possible. He has been rewriting the narrative of October 7 and everything that led up to it since October 8 when he had a meeting with his political advisors and PR people. He wants the greatest distance from October 7 that he can attain and he relies on the typically short memory of Israelis.
2. Will bring about demands from most sectors of society and politics for an Official Independent Commission of Inquiry, the thing that Netanyahu most fears. He knows that this kind of commission will find him responsible, culpable and to blame for most of what led up to October 7, the mishandling of the hostage crisis and the war. He has done everything to prevent this commission from being born, even trying to get the Knesset to pass a law forbidding the existence of this commission. Instead, he wants a Knesset Commission that he and his cronies can control entirely and shift all the blame to the security organizations.
3. Will shorten the time needed to complete the judicial overthrow. Netanyahu needs certain aspects of the overthrow so that his criminal trials will be cancelled and thrown out before they finish and a verdict is given. That is why he has done everything he can to draw out the trials with almost never-ending personal testimony, trial delays for every possible reason (health, political crisis, diplomatic crisis, etc., many of which are of his own making, just for this purpose). If the judicial overthrow doesn’t complete its course, his trial could complete its legal course and the judges will come through with their verdicts. Netanyahu is also deathly afraid of that. He doesn’t want to be the first and only sitting prime minister convicted of major crimes or to be forced out of politics, and his worst fear is that they will send him to prison, also to be the first sitting prime minister to be sentenced to prison (Olmert resigned before his trial began and his conviction)

The first way to end the war and bring home all the hostages would have to come out of Washington. Everyone knows that the only way for this war to end through diplomatic channels is if Trump were to apply the necessary pressure to force Netanyahu to accept ending the war and bringing home all the hostages. Trump’s emissary, Steve Witkoff, of course is the linchpin.

Unfortunately, Witkoff’s involvement in the hostage negotiations is constantly superseded by issues that are more pressing to Trump. This wouldn’t be the case if Witkoff hadn’t reached the conclusion that he alone can’t force Netanyahu to make a conclusive deal to end the war and bring home all the hostages. Witkoff has a personal stake in getting the hostages home and therefore, he has attempted to conclude interim deals that get some hostages home. In the big picture, these are all bad deals as they leave many of the hostages behind with no set date or method to bring them home as well. He knows they are not the ideal deals but he sees victory and the saving of lives for every single hostage he is successful in bringing home.

So why can’t Witkoff convince Trump to apply the necessary pressure on Netanyahu? It is well known that Trump is dying to get the Nobel Peace Prize. It irks him to no end that Obama received it and he has made it his mission to cancel out or outdo Obama in every possible way. Ending the Gaza war and bringing home the hostages was one of the ways that Trump saw to attain this prize. He also viewed the Russia/Ukraine War as another as well as making a nuclear deal with Iran. He has failed with Russia/Ukraine for various reasons and has not succeeded with our war. He thought it would be an easy thing to conclude but then he ran up against our prime minister, who worships the ground that Trump walks on, but he worships his political position even more. Trump has very little to no understanding of how our political system works and had no understanding of Netanyahu’s precarious hold on his premiership. He has tried gentle pushing and even stronger pushing which is what brought us the last hostage deal that Netanyahu broke when he refused to send negotiators to work out Phase 2 of that deal.

Right now, most of Trump’s international efforts are closing a nuclear deal with Iran and as such, has told Netanyahu in no uncertain terms, that he better back off on his threats about bombing Iran to take out the nuclear sites. In simple words “DON’T”. Due to his “Don’t” regarding Iran, Trump doesn’t want to push the ‘DO’ on Netanyahu to end the war. To a certain degree, Trump’s ‘Don’t’ is frustrating Netanyahu as he views the option of bombing Iran in his myopic field of vision as a political option to keep him in office, more than anything else. Bombing Iran as part of his War of Political Survival would enable him to keep pushing his agenda of no elections during a war and no Commission of Inquiry during a war.

Now to the second way to end the war and bring home all the hostages. Today, Netanyahu is facing a coalition crisis or, at least, instability that he is doing all he can to set right again. The Haredim for their part are threatening to leave the government and it all comes down to Shas and Aryeh Deri. If Shas goes along with voting against the government, it will fall and early elections will be called. This second way is fully dependent on the collapse of the government.
If a vote of no confidence is passed and the government falls, there will be elections in no later than 3 months, as per the law. It could be earlier but that is unlikely.

There are many things that Netanyahu will use to counter the many opposition attacks on him regarding October 7 and the entire mismanagement of the war. He will continue with his subversive and irresponsible narrative that all responsibility for October 7 falls on the security organizations (The IDF, Shin Bet, Mossad) and none falls on the political echelon, especially not on the person who has been Prime Minister for the better part of the last 15 years. He will try to sell successes (the security organizations successes) as his own of devastating Hezbollah, the fall of Assad in Syria, the attacks on the Houthis and Iran.

What he currently doesn’t claim is his illusive and unidentified “Total Victory” in the war in Gaza or bringing home all the hostages. If we will be going to early elections, that will change dramatically. Most likely, in 1.5 to 2 months (not before), Netanyahu will declare “Total Victory” claiming that all of the Hamas leadership in Gaza and some out of Gaza have been eliminated and stating that they no longer pose an existential threat to the State of Israel, so we can make a deal to end the war and bring home all the hostages. That deal will be completed with the hostages being brought home and the recall of troops out of Gaza at the latest one month before elections, meaning in 2 months’ time. It won’t be much earlier than that because Netanyahu needs his ‘Total Victory’ to be fresh in everyone’s minds and he will minimize the real suffering of the hostages for so long in captivity and emphasize that all the hostages killed while in captivity were killed by Hamas and he did everything that was humanly possible to get them home sooner. It will be at the time that he declares “Total Victory’ when he explains and details what that means, because, at present, it has no meaning whatsoever, and that is on purpose. Netanyahu doesn’t want anyone to challenge him on what it means and what success looks like. He will define it all and do his best to sell it to the public.

We all know that the Israeli public, like in so many other countries, has a very short memory which makes it so much easier for snake oil salesmen like Netanyahu to sell a complete revisionist narrative that makes him look like what he has always declared for himself: “Mr. Security” and the “Savior of the Jewish People” (not of Israel but of the entire Jewish people). He will try to completely rewrite everything that led up to October 7, the massacre of October 7, the abandonment of the government and the IDF of the Western Negev and the whole country, the total failures of the dysfunctional government since Black Saturday, the mishandling of the war and the hostages, the damage to the economy and the tremendous damage to Israel’s standing internationally. Whatever he can’t explain away, he will scapegoat others so that no responsibility falls on him and take all the credit for the things that look good in public relations.

There have been too many times that his theory of short memory has worked entirely in his favor and in some ways and with some people, it has worked to his favor regarding the war and possibly even about October 7. But I have faith that because October 7 was unlike anything that we have ever encountered in our history and the attack and subsequent fears and unsettling of our souls on that day, the voting population (at least most of it not including the Bibist cult followers) will not forget what happened then or for the 613 days so far that have followed.

Mr. Netanyahu, we will not forget, we will not forgive. You abandoned all of us and mostly the hostages for the last 20 months. Many have died in captivity who shouldn’t have died. They should have been brought home a long time ago. We will forever hold you responsible for October 7, for the deaths of 1200 innocent souls, for 251 hostages being taken from their homes in pajamas, from a music festival, and from their bases that were left miserably unprotected. Mr. Netanyahu, there will be a Commission of Inquiry and everything you have done will come out and you will be made to pay a price, although no price high enough will ever be sufficient for your failures to the country and the people. You and your failed and corrupt government will go into the history books as the worst and most damaging Prime Minister and government in our history and it will be stated very clearly that you acted first and foremost for yourself before the needs of the country. No buildings will be named for you, no towns, no cities, no universities. On the contrary, your name will almost be like that of Voldemort, a name that should not be spoken.

But before this reckoning, before justice is meted out, before you expand the war to Iran, just do one thing, the right thing – BRING THEM HOME NOW!

“I’ve never met them,
But I miss them.
I’ve never met them,
but I think of them every second.
I’ve never met them,
but they are my family.
BRING THEM HOME NOW!!!”