Jerusalem: The capture of dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians elderly women, children, entire families by Hamas militants has stirred Israeli emotions more visceral than any crisis in the country’s recent memory and presented an impossible dilemma for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right government.
The Islamist militant group’s 2006 seizure of a sole young conscript, Gilad Shalit, consumed Israeli society for years a national obsession that prompted Israel to heavily bombard the Gaza Strip and ultimately release over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom had been convicted of deadly attacks on Israelis, in exchange for Shalit’s freedom.
This time, Gaza’s Hamas rulers have abducted dozens of Israeli civilians and soldiers as part of a multipronged, shock attack on Saturday. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a militant group smaller and more brazen than Hamas, said Sunday that it alone had seized 30 hostages.
Their captivity raises the heat on Netanyahu and his hawkish, far-right allies, who are already under intense pressure to respond to the killing of over 700 Israelis in the Hamas attack so far.
Netanyahu’s vow to unleash the full force of the Israeli military on Hamas has raised fears for the safety of Israeli civilians spread in undisclosed locations across the densely populated Gaza Strip.
“It will limit the directions and areas that the IDF can be active,” Michael Milstein, a former head of the Palestinian department in Israeli military intelligence, said of the hostage situation. “It will make things much more complicated.”
Locating Israeli hostages in Gaza something Israeli intelligence agencies failed to do in the case of Shalit poses further challenges.
Although Gaza is tiny, subject to constant aerial surveillance and surrounded by Israeli ground and naval forces, the territory just over an hour from Tel Aviv remains somewhat opaque to Israeli intelligence agencies, experts say.
“We don’t know where Israelis are sheltered,” said Yaakov Amidror, a former national security adviser to Netanyahu. “But this whole issue of captured Israelis will not stop Israel from bombing Gaza until Hamas is destroyed.”