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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / The Israel-Hamas Truce Appears To Be Over!

The Israel-Hamas Truce Appears To Be Over!

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Reporting from Barak Ravid:

As I’ve written numerous times over the past week, eventually Sinwar was going to run out of time because his forces do not have control of all the hostages, let alone all the women and children hostages. It appears that reckoning is now imminent.

Now we wait to see what Israel does in a little over an hour.

Updated at 12:02 AM EST:

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

26Comments

  2. 2.

    Urza

    I figured Israel would stop when there wasn’t enough hostages left to care about.  Bibi can’t survive in peacetime now.

  7. 7.

    Jinchi

    Sorry if you’ve answered this question before, but if Sinwar doesn’t have control of all the hostages, are there other groups that do?

  8. 8.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jinchi: I have, but that’s okay. PIJ Has some. Gazan criminal gangs have others. And it was reported yesterday that Hamas traded some. That Hamas only ever had about 40 or so of the women and children was always one of the primary failure points of the truce.

  9. 9.

    Another Scott

    HCR’s Letter today:

    In the final exchange of hostages taken by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel under the current truce, Hamas released 16 people—10 Israelis and four Thai nationals, along with two Russian-Israeli women in a separate release—while Israel released 30 people from its jails.

    Negotiators from Qatar, Egypt, Israel, and the U.S. are rushing to try to get another truce in place, even as far-right Israeli leaders are pressuring Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to restart the assault on Hamas. Far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir warned today that unless he does, Ben-Gvir’s faction will leave the government coalition Netanyahu leads. “Stopping the war = breaking apart the government,” Ben-Gvir said.

    Losing that faction would not overturn the government, but it would weaken Netanyahu enough that he could have to call elections. Netanyahu, who remains under indictment for bribery and fraud, is eager to stay in power, but recent polls show his popularity is perilously low: only 27% of Israelis in one recent poll said they would vote for him. Two members of his staff told Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times he wants to avoid an election at all costs.

    […]

    It’s always been about Bibi protecting his political future and staying out of prison.

    Peace and comfort to the innocents.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  10. 10.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: Actually, in this case it’s Hamas doesn’t have the hostages to trade. I’ve only been explaining this for the better part of a week that whenever they ran out, the war was going to resume. Is Bibi a self serving asshole? Without a doubt. But as soon as the last hostage that would be released was released no one in the war cabinet – not Bibi, not Ganz, not Gallant – was going to just stop fighting. Remember Gallant is more extreme than Bibi and Ganz is more hawkish and in favor of using force

    Hamas has agency too. As does the PIJ and the Gazan criminal gangs. Sinwar gambled. He repeatedly tried to demonstrate and display dominance. That he was in control, not Bibi, not Biden, not the Emir of Qatar. His gamble has failed. Unfortunately it is not his time that has run out as a result. It is the Gazans.

  11. 11.

    Shalimar

    Tough shit for the families of those 7.  “Sorry your relatives had to die, but we only accept groups of 10.”

  12. 12.

    Adam L Silverman

    A bit of good news:

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: Israel and Hamas agreed to extend the ceasefire by another day

  15. 15.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Yes, I saw reports / speculation a while ago (in addition to your updates) that Hamas didn’t have all the hostages too.  And we’ve heard Bibi himself say that the pause wasn’t going to last longer than 10 days no matter what.  But I hadn’t seen the information HCR noted today and thought I would pass it along.

    It’s easy for players to find a reason to leave an agreement when they didn’t want to be in the agreement in the first place.

    Thanks.

    [eta:] Good news on the extension.  I’m sure that Biden and Blinken were burning up the phone lines…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  16. 16.

    way2blue

    Adam. Thanks always for your insights on how this intractable crisis may play out—even if they’re mostly bleak..

    A question:   What would be the motivation of these other extremist groups holding hostages to keep the hostages?  What is their end game?  I had the sense that Hamas hoped to trigger a larger conflict beyond the sporadic drone strikes coming from Yemen or flare of random senseless attacks against both Jewish and Arab people in Europe and the U.S.  With that hope fading (?)—what’s next?   Once Gaza is all rubble—then what?  I’m not comprehending a strategy on either side?

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MobiusKlein: One of their political leaders stated on the 7th or 8th of October, and I’m paraphrasing here, that the Palestinians were a nation of martyrs and they would willingly make more.

  20. 20.

    sab

    @Adam L Silverman: Yikes. And I often think our political leaders suck. Gazan leadership thinks it will be useful for most of them to die.

    Thus proving Gaza is not currently a democracy, although many  argue that Gazans chose this 17 years ago. Hint: one election 17 years ago isn’t indicative of a democracy.

  21. 21.

    sab

    Others didn’t help, but no one did more harm to his peoples’ cause than Sirhan Sirhan.

    Lesson learned: Don’t assasinate people. If you feel driven to do this, you probably are not informed enough to do it intelligently. You will just stir up the wrong people.

  22. 22.

    Princess

    One maybe odd thing — they released two Israeli-Russian hostages yesterday as a side deal. Haaretz pointed out they could have released them today to make up the numbers of the Israeli ten and took it as a sign that Hamada DID have enough women and children for another day. So was Hamas bluffing earlier when it said it had only seven? God, it’s all so awful. The wicked benefit from this mess and the well intentioned suffer.

  23. 23.

    Princess

    @MobiusKlein: my theory has always been that Hamas sees all of Gaza as expendable and easily replaced by overseas Palestinians and others once the country extends from the river to the sea. I also expect they’d win in a landslide if an election could be held in the Palestinian Territories today. Im obvs just talking out my ass here — I have no expertise 

  24. 24.

    charon

    @sab:

    The man’s name is simply Sirhan.  “Sirhan Sirhan” is the consequence of ignorant cops not understanding how Arab names work.

  25. 25.

    Geminid

    @Princess: Hamas may expect “only” another 14,000 civilians to die. That might be enough to severely degrade support for Israel in the West, which was one of their strategic goals on October 7.

    So far though, Germany, France and most other EU countries have basically sided Israel in this conflict. Their governments decry the excessive civilian casualties, but they’re not recalling ambassadors or threatening sanctions.

    That could change, but right now these countries and the US seem to expect a renewed Israeli offensive, and they do not back a permanent ceasefire at this point.

    Without a ceasefire, Hamas’s main hope could be to inflict heavy losses on the IDF. Hamas and its allies say Hamas did this during the first phase of the invasion, but Israel says their losses were at the lower end of of the projected range. One thing seems certain: when this truce ends, there will be intense fighting that will go on for days if not weeks.

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