National Security Council Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi made a stunning prediction on May 29, 2024: The war would need to continue for another seven months. Given that the end of the war was expected to coincide with a hostage deal, Hanegbi nailed the role of prophet.
But was he really prophetic, or did he already know something that outsiders could only guess at?
While few observers knew what the military logic was for seven months at the time, it later became apparent that the plan was to hope for a US presidential election win by President-elect Donald Trump, which might lead to a more favorable global handling of the Palestinian issue, even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu might need to make concessions at that later date.
Netanyahu even made allusions to the timing of the presidential election influencing aspects of war decision-making and a possible hostage deal in an interview he gave recently to The Wall Street Journal (though he did not specifically tie the hope for a Trump win to the timing of ending the war).
Since Hanegbi’s prediction on May 29, 192 soldiers and some dozens of hostages have been killed.
Hostage deal if Israel would leave the Philadelphi Corridor
Several defense sources told The Jerusalem Post then and even in July – by which time all of Hamas’s 24 organized battalions were taken apart – that a deal could be cut only if Israel would be willing to leave the Philadelphi corridor after Phase 1 of the deal and allow most Gazans to return to northern Gaza through the Netzarim corridor.
If there are differences between the current deal and the previous one, it could be in the number of hostages released in Phase 1.
Another factor would be if Israel were to retain a serious security perimeter once the deal expires.
Diplomatic sources have said Hamas simply was not ready to finalize the deal in May or July and was lying to Israel at the time about how many hostages were alive or dead to manipulate Jerusalem into receiving fewer live hostages upfront.
So, if a deal wasn’t possible in May because of Hamas, then there is not much to analyze.
The interesting question will be: When certain negotiators who are not bound to Netanyahu by loyalty eventually tell their full narratives of the negotiations, will it turn out that a deal could have been cut before the deaths of 192 soldiers and dozens of hostages?
If that happens, Netanyahu’s narrative will need to shift to the idea that he wanted the deal closer to Trump’s inauguration to have more favorable frameworks for the day after and Saudi normalization.
Historians will then debate whether the Palestinian enclave being run by the Palestinian Authority, along with the UAE, Egypt, and the CIA, taking over in early or mid-2024, would have been better or worse than Netanyahu’s as-yet unclear plans for the day after, which emphasize keeping the PA out.
Of course, there are also other major achievements Israel and Netanyahu have made since July: killing Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif, and Ismail Haniyeh, clobbering Hezbollah and eliminating its leader Hassan Nasrallah, defanging aspects of Iran’s arsenal, and indirectly assisting in toppling the Assad regime in Syria – as a non-exhaustive list.
It will be hard, if not impossible, to objectively analyze what might have been seven months ago against what actually transpired.
What we do know for sure is that Hanegbi was confident enough to make a precise public prediction on a seemingly random day in May.