It may well be that the deal Israel is preparing to sign with Hamas is unavoidable. Some will hail it as a major achievement, others will point to its many flaws. But one thing it absolutely is not: a “total victory.” Far from it.
A country that agrees to release from prison 250 terrorists convicted of multiple murders, and Israel has agreed to do just that, is a country under extortion, a country that has capitulated to terror. At least in this respect, terror has brought us to our knees.
A country that sets free Abbas al-Sayed, sentenced to 35 life terms for orchestrating the 2002 Passover bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya that killed 30 and wounded 160, and who reportedly asked his nephew to lace the explosives with cyanide, or Hassan Salameh, a Hamas military commander trained in Lebanon by Hezbollah and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and sentenced to 46 life terms for murdering dozens of Israelis, or even symbolic figures like Marwan Barghouti, serving five life terms, or Ahmad Saadat, the mastermind of the assassination of Minister Rehavam Ze’evi, cannot credibly claim to have secured “total victory.”
Marwan Barghouti during his trial (archive). “Only” five life sentences. Photo: Tal Cohen
Israel, which has now agreed to release these mass murderers or others like them, is a country that rightly sanctifies the lives of its hostages, but at the same time mortgages the lives of its citizens. When it comes to terrorists, once a murderer, always a murderer. More than 85% of terrorists released in past decades have returned to terrorism, to attack or kill Israelis again. There’s no real reason to think this time will be different. We are releasing ticking time bombs.
So maybe there’s no alternative, but please, stop selling this deal to us as a “total victory.” Israel has achieved significant accomplishments: large parts of the Gaza Strip have been flattened; we’ve established a perimeter, eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, carved the Strip into segments, destroyed hundreds of miles of underground infrastructure, taken control of the Philadelphi Route, and more.
But alongside these gains, we’ve also sent a clear message: in the end, the way to secure the release of killers and butchers, and to press for other outrageous demands, is through more abductions. The very thing that is the strength of Israeli society, our commitment to the mitzvah of redeeming captives and to mutual responsibility, has now proven to be our weakness, perhaps even our breaking point. That commitment extends all the way to the dangerous edge: emptying our prisons of those who murdered, and who are almost certain to murder again or orchestrate more killings.
We will rejoice when the hostages come home. Our hearts will race and our eyes will fill with tears. But stop calling it “total victory.” When you release, willingly or under duress, a gallery of ruthless killers back into the streets or to the border, men who left behind only death, grief and pain, and are likely to repeat their crimes, you are capitulating to terror. You are releasing hostages, by surrendering to terrorism.
The terrorists released in the Jibril deal became the backbone of the First Intifada. Photo: Nati Harnik, GPO
The terrorists freed in the 1985 Jibril deal became the backbone of the First Intifada, in which 165 Israelis were murdered. Roughly half of the terrorists released under the Oslo Accords joined the Palestinian terror apparatus, with many playing key roles in the Second Intifada, which killed 1,178 Israelis. Those released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit deal went on to build the largest terror hub in the world – Gaza – and brought about the October 7 massacre.
Even if this deal must go through, we must ask: where will the terrorists released in the 2025 deal take us? The Shin Bet security agency, the Israel Defense Forces and the Mossad must answer one question: how will they succeed this time where they have failed in past deals, to prevent the released terrorists from returning to terrorism?
