According to the IDF, 136 hostages are still in the Gaza Strip, and it might take months to get them out, despite the military’s notable progress in achieving operational control over northern Gaza, The Jerusalem Post has learned.
Whether Israel can return all hostages is itself an open question, given Hamas’s demands to date. It has provided no sign that it would agree to a deal that would keep them alive.
So even if a hostage deal emerges, that deal is expected to include only a few dozen hostages, not all of them. Even in the best-case scenario all the hostages can be expected to return only after the IDF zeros in on the exact location of Hamas’s top three leaders: Yahya Sinwar, Muhammad Deif, and Marwan Issa, along with the hostages themselves.
At the pace that the IDF is trawling through the massive tunnel network in Khan Yunis – where most or all of the Hamas leaders are said to be located – the Post understands that it could take months to find and pin down their exact locations.
This slow progress comes even as the IDF on Saturday night announced it has full operational control of northern Gaza, with most of the fighting in that area having concluded already by December 19 with the fall of Jabalya.
The hostage crisis will drag on for months even though five reserve brigades have been released, half-a-dozen Israeli villages in the South have started to see their communities return, and the IDF is rolling out its probe of October 7 – all signaling that the Gaza War is already in “Stage 3” of lower intensity conflict.
Given that the IDF is entering Stage 3, it is unclear whether the return of the hostages is a few months away or closer at hand, or whether it could culminate in some sort of siege, a “staring contest” in which the IDF is afraid to attack for fear of killing the hostages, while Hamas leaders refuse to surrender.
The IDF estimates, or hopes, that, at some point in this range of possibilities, the threat of an attack will convince Hamas leaders to release all the hostages.