Hamas's intransigence is preventing the war from ending - editorial

The families of late Israeli hostages Yagev Buchshtab, Alexander Dancyg, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Popplewell, and Haim Perry received news on Tuesday that they had been hoping for, and dreading.

The bodies of their loved ones had been retrieved in a complex operation conducted by the IDF and the Shin Bet in Gaza tunnels in the Khan Yunis area. Their return and burial in Israel will symbolize a closure of sorts for a 10-month-old wound that will actually never fully heal.

The body of another hostage captured on October 7 who was thought to still be alive in Hamas captivity was also discovered – that of 79-year-old Kibbutz Nir Oz resident Avraham Munder.

Munder, who, as a young soldier, participated in the 1967 liberation of Jerusalem during the Six Day War, was taken captive along with his wife Ruti, his daughter Keren, and his nine-year-old grandson Ohad. They were released in the November hostage deal following 49 days in captivity.

“It’s sad that a person who participated in liberating Jerusalem and answered the call to develop communities in the Negev had his life ended by being thrown aside in a tunnel in Khan Yunis,” Munder’s nephew told KAN’s Reshet Bet.

Munder’s death lowers the number of hostages still in Gaza, alive or dead, to 109 and underlines the urgency expressed this week by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken for reaching a deal to secure their release.

As the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said on Tuesday, “[Munder’s] murder in captivity underscores the delay in implementing the deal that could have saved his life and the lives of other hostages.”

Time running out

Blinken, in his statements to the media on Monday night after holding a long meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said that “with every passing day that there’s not an agreement” hostages can perish and “intervening events” can occur that could “make things even more difficult, if not impossible.”

There is, therefore, this “fierce urgency of now” particularly since “we do see this as the best opportunity to finally get this over the finish line,” Blinken stated. “The longer this goes on, the more, again, hostages will suffer, possibly perish, and the more other things happen that should make this impossible. So that’s why we’re so intensely focused on getting this done and getting it done now.”

Just as importantly, Blinken made it clear that Netanyahu has accepted the US bridging proposals that would lead to a ceasefire and hostage release and that Hamas was the impediment to the success of this outcome. Blinken put the onus squarely on the terrorist group to find a semblance of clarity that would stop the devastation that its war on Israel has caused the Palestinian people in Gaza and accept the proposal that everyone else involved in the process – Israel, the US, mediators Egypt and Qatar – have agreed upon.

“It’s now incumbent on Hamas to do the same [as Israel]. And then the parties, with the help of the mediators the United States, Egypt and Qatar, have to come together and complete the process of reaching clear understandings about how they’ll implement commitments that they’ve made under this agreement,” Blinken said.

Details of the bridging agreement that have been leaked in various media reports indicated that Israel has stretched as far as it can in its insistence on maintaining a presence in the two critical Gaza security corridors of Philadelphi and Netzarim.

US President Joe Biden accused Hamas of “backing away” from the plan during his speech Monday night at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Biden’s commitment to reaching a ceasefire that would also theoretically stop the bombardment of Israel’s North by Hezbollah and its sponsor of terrorism, Iran, as well as prevent the conflict from widening to include Iran directly, should be embraced by all Israelis.

His secretary of state has made an unprecedented nine visits to the region since October 7, a testament to the importance sees in its alliance with Israel.

We thank them for standing with Israel and for confirming over the last 24 hours that it’s not Israel that is holding up a deal that would bring some of the hostages back home; it’s Hamas.