Irresponsible, shameful, lethal: Netanyahu’s disgraceful efforts to bring home Israeli hostages

Women protest in Tel Aviv to demand a deal for the release of Israeli hostages being held in Gaza by Hamas, January 2024

Daniel Levin writes in Haaretz on 29 January 2024:

Families of the hostages taken October 7 have been forced to endure unbearable torrents of contempt, deceit, and neglect from the Israeli political leadership, proving, once again, that times of national crisis do not always build character, but often reveal it.

Instead of working behind the scenes with tactical and strategic discipline, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, together with his coalition minions, has conducted himself so irresponsibly that he appears to undermine the hostage negotiations.

How else to explain the authorized leak of Netanyahu bad-mouthing Qatar, a country playing a vital role in the efforts to release the hostages? He even chose to double down on his insults during the very days a framework for an agreement is being worked out by senior American, Egyptian, and, yes, Qatari, officials.

Why disseminate these highly sensitive discussions, when even the slightest miscue could sink any hostage deal? And how else to explain the gratuitous antagonizing and undermining of the Biden administration with belligerent pronouncements against any two-state solution, and the stream of fear-mongering, lies, and double-speak Netanyahu has mastered?

It’s agonizingly difficult to conduct hostage negotiations in the middle of a war taking place in the very territory in which hostages are being held captive.  Ongoing fighting in Gaza, including the current escalation in South Gaza and the encirclement of Khan Yunis, jeopardizes the hostages’ lives not only because it hardens the captors’ resolve, but also because of the increased likelihood that hostages will be killed in Israeli strikes on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets or even in tragic errors by Israeli troops.

Just as the Israeli public is being misled about the IDF’s ability to destroy Hamas or even its entire underground tunnel network by military means, families of the hostages are being lied to when told this war will lead to the return of their sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandmothers and grandfathers.

Traumatized families of hostages can be forgiven, in their pain and rage, for acting in ways that are unconducive to releasing their loved ones, such as attempts to block aid convoys into Gaza until all the hostages are freed. But loudmouth politicians and far-right inciters who disseminate hate for their own aggrandizement cannot be forgiven. For them, the death of a hostage is merely collateral damage, a minor price to pay – by someone else – for the sake of their own publicity.

Every hostage negotiation I have been involved in resulted in the same division: families of hostages, who feel abandoned and helpless, and public figures, for whom the tragedy is a media bonanza as they chase every camera and microphone in sight.

A negotiation even for one hostage held by a dangerous, vicious group is an extraordinarily difficult undertaking with long odds and very few happy endings. A negotiation for dozens, let alone hundreds of hostages in the thick of a horrible war with tens of thousands of civilian casualties presents challenges of a different order of magnitude.  These challenges can only be met with the highest degree of operational and emotional intelligence – traits that are in short supply among Israel’s leadership today.

There are seven core principles that separate successful and failed hostage negotiations.

1) Those who talk, don’t do. And those who do, don’t talk

The discussions, horse trades, favors and counter-favors have to take place in complete darkness in order to have a chance. There must be full plausible deniability, because sometimes these trades contain unsavory arrangements, sometimes pacts with the devil. Key discussions happen at an informal “Track 3” level, and usually no one will ever get to hear about them, even after the release of a hostage. Those running these negotiations need to be discreet and content with never getting credit for having saved a life – again, not exactly the forte of Israel’s political class.

2) Eliminate the freelancers

No matter how well-intended – and not all of them are – they create dangerous distractions and leave the impression of a flailing, unreliable leadership. It is unforgivable for Yossi Cohen, the former head of the Mossad, to travel around the region running his own show – with or without the prime minister’s tacit approval or even encouragement, we will presumably have to wait for the post-war inquiry to find out. Such actions undermine the official team tasked with the negotiations, which happens to include the current head of the Mossad.

3) Negotiations are neither linear nor symmetrical

Even when negotiating for single hostage, it can be excruciatingly difficult to agree on a value equivalence, which is the main reason most negotiations fail. There rarely is parity between the sides when it comes to a society’s ability to endure the barrage of harrowing media coverage and resulting public pressure, which is why we can end up with a ratio of over a thousand to one, as happened in the 2011 release of Gilad Shalit after over five years in captivity.

Sometimes, direct swaps cannot be made between the two hostile parties and must involve additional sides for the trades to work. The closest analogy is a multiparty trade among sports teams, where Team A and Team B cannot exchange players directly because they lack, or are perceived to lack, equivalent value, forcing them to add Team C and sometimes even Team D before each side can get the player it covets.

Turkey, Egypt, or Qatar, for example, may have something of value to Hamas or parties in its orbit, including Iran, Hezbollah, and Syria. Israel and parties in its orbit, including America and certain European nations, may have something of value to countries like Turkey, Egypt, or Qatar – spyware, diplomatic alliances, or support for votes or membership at multinational organizations. This haggling, reminiscent of a Byzantine bazaar, may appear unseemly, but it’s how things get done.

4) Master the art of cashing chips

Every successful hostage negotiation requires an exchange of favors and counter-favors. They can take the form of arranging medical treatment for a relative of a captor, unfreezing a bank account, or a barter of anything from people, food, medicine, money, and valuable information. All the chips cashed in this process must be instantly deployable, which means they must have been collected and prepared well before they are needed. They also have an expiration date just like anything of value that will eventually become stale.

5) The release is the ultimate, but not the sole objective

For negotiations to be successful, we need information on the hostages’ location, medical condition, whether they are held in groups or in isolation, on their captors and their captors’ superiors and relatives. Several hostages are badly injured and in desperate need of medical attention, some require medicine, some surgery, some baby formula, and some are no longer alive. No detail is too small, no piece of information is extraneous.

6) We are not negotiating with friends

This point should be obvious, but apparently not everyone has received the memo, judging by the maximalist rhetoric and demands. The reason we need allies and intermediaries is because countries at war have usually lost the ability to communicate directly and rationally with each other, even when their interests could be aligned.

This is not unique to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. When an American citizen is kidnapped or wrongfully detained by a hostile group or regime, the U.S., for all its military might and diplomatic prowess, often lacks direct access to those holding the captive, both because its officials are unable to contact them and because they may be barred from doing so because of sanctions and terrorist group designations. This applies even to those whose very responsibility lies in bringing about the release of kidnapped or detained Americans, such as the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs. Trusted allies are indispensable, inobtrusive messengers and negotiators who shuttle back and forth in the shadows. Anyone with a genuine desire to free the hostages would nurture relationships with these vital allies, not emasculate them.

7) Don’t be a jerk

Like any iteration of quiet diplomacy, hostage negotiations require the ability to connect with an opponent, to find a common language even in the absence of common values. Battle-hardened captors never confuse blustery calls for total destruction with real strength. Tough-guy threats reveal nothing other than insecurity and helplessness, which brings us full circle back to the first principle: those who talk, don’t do, and those who do, don’t talk.

The Israeli political leadership, from the prime minister all the way to the person he appointed to coordinate hostage negotiations, has conducted itself in a disgraceful manner, focused more on photo-ops and gaslighting the hostages’ families than on a disciplined, effective campaign.

It’s time to end this shameful performance and act with the empathy, intelligence, professionalism, and dignity the hostages and their families deserve.

Daniel Levin is a member of the Board of the Liechtenstein Foundation for State Governance, which is engaged in ‘Track 3’ mediation initiatives in the Middle East.

This article is reproduced in its entirety