Northern residents feel that hostage deal will prevent them from coming home - analysis

It is easy to try to put significant blame for the lack of a hostage deal on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist right-wing coalition partners, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

Certainly, these three figures are part of the reason no deal has been reached despite a clear push from the defense establishment and Mossad Director David Barnea to do so around a month ago.

But aside from Hamas, which obviously takes the most blame by far, there is another complex component delaying a deal that has largely been ignored.

Conventionally, those supporting a hostage deal support it for three reasons: 1) the moral imperative to return the hostages at nearly all costs; 2) preventing the current war from spiraling into a regional one; 3) reaching a ceasefire in the North with Hezbollah.

While I have spent nearly all of the 10 months of the war reporting that the 60,000 or so northern residents who have been evacuated from their homes have wanted the IDF to strike Hezbollah much harder, even at the risk of a larger war, I was reminded again of this up close this week.

Spending a weekend at a hotel in Tiberias with a large number of evacuees – mostly from Kiryat Shmona, Dovev, and Avivim – I heard, time after time, how the IDF must launch a much larger war against Hezbollah.

I would go as far as to say that the tone was even different than in some earlier months, where northern residents mostly wanted a larger war to give them security but were also open to a diplomatic deal.

Over 300 days into the war, the North is pessimistic on a future deal

Ten months has worn them down. They are sick of waiting for negotiations, and after so many months of attacks, they do not trust Hezbollah to stick to any deal anyway.

If the government and the IDF had hoped that the military’s clobbering Hamas in Gaza, destroying huge swaths of that territory, and significantly bleeding Hezbollah for 10 months would restore a sense of deterrence and safety for northern residents, it would seem the opposite has happened.

For all of the IDF’s achievements, these northern residents now seem to only care about the bottom line: The IDF failed to prevent Hezbollah rockets. Because of that failure and their perception that killing 450 Hezbollah fighters and commanders has failed to deter the Lebanese terrorist group, they will be satisfied with nothing less than a major attack against Hezbollah.

While many supporters of a hostage release, especially in Tel Aviv and central Israel, have been shielded from direct threats since Hamas’s rocket capacity fell in December-January, and they have been able to live in their regular homes, these northern residents have felt under attack throughout.

Many of them said they still go back and forth to the North on a daily basis to maintain businesses related to farming, animals, or other work activities dependent on being physically near their homes. For such persons, they have not only been evacuated but have remained actually under attack during the hours they work in the North.

Of course, someone could say to split the difference: Reach a hostage deal and ceasefire with Hamas, while continuing to fight with Hezbollah in the North.

But that is an unlikely scenario.

If Israel and Hamas reach a ceasefire, most likely – though the current round of escalation could change that scenario – that would lead to a ceasefire with Israel and Hezbollah also.

No matter what the Israeli political and defense echelons have said, their ability to justify to the rest of the country to start a larger war with Hezbollah if the Lebanese terrorist organization has stopped firing will be very small.

This means the northern residents essentially are against a ceasefire to get the hostages back, even if they will not say it that way, because it would prevent action against Hezbollah, which they believe is necessary to restore life on the northern border.

While this is not nice to say, this means that in a very real way, the current views and interests of the hostage families and of the northern residents are in polar opposition.

This might have been more ambiguous when more northern residents were open to the idea of negotiations with Hezbollah. But at least this past weekend, it became clear to me that the northern residents view the Zionist imperative of maintaining their northern villages – including a big attack on Hezbollah – as a higher priority than returning the hostages.

In analyzing Netanyahu and his associates’ actions and views in the near future, glossing over this possibly irreconcilable paradox may lead to failed strategies and outcomes on multiple fronts.