Two Israeli officials told US media outlet Axios that Israel is willing to postpone its planned ground invasion of the Gaza Strip in order to make way for negotiations to release the scores of prisoners being held by Hamas.
“Both Israel and the Biden administration want to exhaust every effort to try and get hostages out of Gaza. If Hamas proposes a big package, of course we will be ready to do things in return,” one of the officials said.
The Gaza-based resistance group is currently holding over 200 Israeli prisoners which it took when its fighters stormed the settlements of the Gaza envelope on 7 October, marking the start of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.
Since then, Israel has killed over 5,000 Palestinians in a brutal bombing campaign on the besieged enclave, and has vowed to “eliminate Hamas” by launching a full invasion of the strip.
The Israeli government “told Egyptian mediators that if Hamas wants some kind of hostage deal, it needs to release all the women and children it’s holding,” according to Axios.
Hamas has already released four prisoners over the past week as a gesture of goodwill, and to pressure Israel into allowing desperately needed humanitarian aid into Gaza. Two more hostages were released on the evening of 23 October.
The Israeli officials speaking to Axios confirmed that Israel had initially refused to receive the first two prisoners, claiming that Hamas had demanded a six-hour ceasefire in return.
“They refused because they didn’t want to create a precedent in which Hamas would release two hostages every time it wanted a ceasefire,” they said, adding that the “Israelis’ concern was that every such ceasefire can allow Hamas to regroup, and give the group’s leaders a chance to move from one hiding place to another without being targeted.”
The US is currently coordinating the prisoner file with Israel and Egyptian and Qatari mediators who are in direct communication with the resistance group.
On Tuesday, spokesman for the Russian Kremlin, Dmitry Peskov, urged Hamas to immediately release all prisoners, some of who hold Russian citizenship.
Hamas officials have said that the group is willing to release non-combatant prisoners in exchange for a cessation of Israeli airstrikes. The group also holds many soldiers and military personnel prisoner, which it plans to use to secure the release of thousands of its prisoners being held in Israeli detention.
However, Israeli officials have publicly vowed not to let a prisoner deal get in the way of the ground invasion, contradicting what the Israeli officials told Axios about a possible delay.
The report follows recent doubt in Washington over Israel’s preparedness for a ground invasion.
US media outlet Bloomberg reported on 14 October that Washington is worried about the lack of proper strategy and a coherent plan for the ground invasion.
On Monday, senior US officials told the New York Times (NYT) that the Israeli army is “not yet ready” to launch a ground offensive into the Gaza Strip and lacks “achievable military objectives” to accomplish the stated goal of “eradicating” Hamas.
“[US] officials said they have not yet seen an achievable plan of action,” the western news outlet details, but also cites senior US officials as saying that the US “had not told Israel what to do and still supported the ground invasion.”
According to The Cradle’s Hassan Illaik, Israel’s stated goal of “eliminating” Hamas is over-ambitious.
“The Palestinian resistance in Gaza has prepared itself well for the ground war,” Illaik writes, adding that Israel’s 2014 ground operation in Gaza was a massive failure that came at a time when the resistance “had nowhere near the quality of armaments, training, and numbers that they have today.”
Illaik also says that Israel potentially faces the threat of several new fronts, particularly the Lebanese front, opening up.
“Delaying the ground war does not, however, mean canceling it,” he added, noting that Israel’s 2014 ground assault began two weeks after the start of its initial war on Gaza.
Another challenge Illaik highlights is that there are hundreds of thousands of civilians in the Gaza Strip who categorically refuse to flee from their homes.
“All these factors pose a potentially insurmountable challenge for Tel Aviv. They each conspire to thwart Israel’s plan to destroy Hamas and re-establish the deterrence capacity it lost on 7 October.”