In 2023 the 2.3 million Palestinian people in Gaza had been for years under Israeli occupation. International politics had moved away from the problem. The dire situation was ignored.
Israel was willing to talk but the government under Benjamin Natanyahoo was blocking any agreement that would lift the severe restrictions it had imposed on Gaza. The strip was in the process of being silently suffocated.
Yahya Sinwar, the local leader of Hamas which rules Gaza, was desperate. He planned for a large operation to breach the fence around Gaza and to abduct Israeli soldiers to be used as assets in further negotiations. Sinwar let it be known through intermediaries that he was planning for something big. Meanwhile his soldiers were openly training for action.
Some Israeli soldiers guarding the strip, Israeli secret services and foreign governments which coordinated Hamas talks with Israel were all aware that something was up. But they did not know when or what might happen.
On October 7 the operation started. The Israeli guards around Gaza had not been warned. A local festival near the strip, which many young Israelis were attending, was ongoing. Hundreds of Sinwar’s forces breached the fence, reached a local military camp, a small town, and stumbled over attendees of the festival. They took hostages wherever the could and tried to move them back into Gaza.
The Israeli army units around the strip were surprised. They had been reduced to a minimum due to holidays and other operations. Not having been warned they reacted confused, slowly and with brute force. Helicopters went up and received orders to fire at anything that was moving. Hundreds of festival attendees who were fleeing the scene were killed by them.
Over the next weeks and months the Israeli government used the incident to proceed with its long term aim of eliminating all Palestinian’s in Gaza. It rejected all offers to retrieve the hostages Sinwar’s forces had taken. It ordered its army to flatten and then occupy Gaza. It set no limits to who or how many should be killed.
There soon was suspicion that the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahoo had known beforehand that the breach of the fence was to take place. It seemed like it had let it happen on purpose to use it as justification for its larger aim – to genocide all of Gaza’s population.
Yesterday the Israeli daily Haaretz published a long piece giving evidence to this.
A week before October 7 Netanyahoo had personally be warned (archived) by the ruler of the United Emirates that some large operation against Israel was soon going to happen:
A week and a half before October 7, 2023 the Emirati ruler called Netanyahu from the Presidential Palace in Abu Dhabi and spoke with him for 45 minutes.
In that conversation, bin Zayed warned that Hamas’ leader in Gaza, Yahya Sinwar, was planning a major operation against Israel. Bin Zayed expressed concern that the event in question would not only lead to bloodshed but also destabilize the entire region and undermine the Abraham Accords.
…
Also present during the call was a close adviser to bin Zayed, a Palestinian who had emigrated years ago from Gaza to Abu Dhabi and maintained strong ties in the Strip. According to the adviser, the Emirati ruler impressed upon Netanyahu the need to prepare for the threat.“The emir explained that, in his assessment, Sinwar was preparing for a major event,” the adviser says. “He told Netanyahu that Israel should be ready. Concurrently, he recommended trying to find an economic solution for the Strip and calming the West Bank to prevent escalation.”
Bin Zayed urged Netanyahu to take the situation seriously.
Netanyahoo did nothing with the new information. Neither the Israeli secret services nor the military were informed of it. The U.S. government under Joe Biden, which had also been contacted, did not react either:
The Emirati ruler would later recount the conversation he had with Netanyahu and the warning he also relayed to CIA Director William J. Burns. Bin Zayed shared with Burns the sense he tried to convey to Netanyahu that “something there is about to explode,” and told him that the Israeli prime minister believed the volatile area was, in fact, the West Bank.
“The emir hoped that despite his reserved response, Netanyahu would take the message seriously and take action,” the adviser says. None of them imagined that the prime minister would hear the message but wouldn’t brief the heads of the defense establishment. The head of the Shin Bet, the head of the Mossad, the Israel Defense Forces chief of staff – none of them knew about bin Zayed’s warning.
The new Haaretz piece is not the first to assert that Netanyahoo was informed of what was coming. Egyptian government officials had also been warned that something big was going to happen.
Netanyahoo, intentionally, did not react to it. He, intentionally, let October 7 happen.
Nor did he care about the hostages that were taken on that day.
Already on the evening of October 7, Yahya Sinwar, through Qatari contacts, already offered to return all civilian hostages:
At 7 P.M., Qatar’s Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani called Mossad Director David Barnea, with whom he had a friendly relationship. “Dedi Boy,” the Qatari ruler used to affectionately call the Israeli intelligence official. The two had met just a week earlier, at the end of Yom Kippur. Barnea had traveled to Doha then on Netanyahu’s behalf to ask the Qataris to increase financial aid to the Strip.
Al-Thani was agitated. “I just finished a conversation with Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh and his deputy Khalil al-Hayya, who had only recently arrived in Doha,” he briefed Barnea. “I explicitly threatened them that if all civilian hostages are not released immediately, I will personally order their expulsion from Qatar. I would like to inform you that Hamas is ready to release all civilians now, and we are prepared to mediate.”
The Israeli Mossad director’s response left al-Thani confused. “If they want to release the civilians, let them release them,” Barnea replied. “We are not prepared to speak with Hamas.”
Neither Israel, nor the U.S. were interested in any immediate hostage release:
Barnea, his associates admit, did hear from Qatar’s prime minister in their first conversation that Hamas was willing to release the civilians, but that the terrorist organization set unacceptable conditions, such as halting the IDF’s incursion into Gaza and new rights for worshippers on the Temple Mount. Qatar’s prime minister denies the claim. “On the first day, Hamas leaders did not set any draconian conditions,” his adviser says, “because our threat to them was real, and they were not in a position to impose conditions at all.”
Al-Thani did not give up. He called U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. “Listen,” he told him, “there are hundreds of hostages in Gaza, and among them, in my estimation, dozens of civilians. They need to be released now. I offered the Israelis to mediate a quick deal for their release, but they are not interested.”
Blinken informed al-Thani that he planned to fly to Israel within three days. “Let’s wait,” he reassured him. “I will speak with Netanyahu personally.” Al-Thani pressed on. “You know that time is an important factor. We need to act now.” Blinken stopped him: “Right now, the situation is complex. Israel is still under attack, and there’s no one to talk to. We will wait three days.”
Due to the many visitors to the festival in the vicinity of Gaza the Hamas operation had caused way more mayhem than had been planned. Yahya Sinwar was eager to calm things down. The Israelis though would not let him:
“To be honest,” the senior official says, “the issue of the hostages was not seriously on the agenda at this stage, and no one at the military or political level was open to discussing the proposal. The release of the hostages did not even enter the list of war objectives formulated by the government on the night of October 7. Could the proposal have been properly discussed and a decision reached? In substantive terms, the answer is yes.
Neither the Israeli government, nor the Biden administration, were interested in getting the hostages back. They were to be used to justify the storm of violence Israel had released against Gaza:
Blinken eventually arrived in Israel after six days. Immediately upon his arrival on Thursday, October 12, he met with Netanyahu, and the next day he continued to Doha for a meeting with Qatar’s prime minister. “I raised the issue of the hostages’ release with Netanyahu, but I did not receive a clear answer from him,” the U.S. secretary of state told al-Thani. “Netanyahu is not there yet!”
Al-Thani reiterated his assessment that as days passed and Israeli attacks in Gaza intensified, claiming many lives, especially among civilians, Hamas’ agreement to release hostages might expire. Blinken promised to try and speak with Netanyahu again. On October 14, shortly after his plane departed Doha for Washington, Blinken sent al-Thani a text message: “Netanyahu is ready for you to mediate. The Mossad director will arrive soon.”
Israel continued to kill many tens of thousands in Gaza with the existence of hostages held by Hamas being its major public justification. The real issue though was, and is, the intent to eliminate all of Gaza’s population:
“The basic problem was that Hamas was looking for a ‘permanent end to the conflict,’ as they called it,” concludes William J. Burns, the former CIA director, in his characteristically measured manner, summing up the labyrinth into which the hostage issue would become entangled. “Netanyahu was only willing to consider a ‘first phase’ deal, but claimed he had to constantly reserve the option ‘to continue destroying Hamas later,’ as he defined it. And that, for us, was always the challenge: How do we square this circle and manage to bring everyone back?”
Well – Biden, Blinken and Burns could of course have used the immense power the U.S. holds over Israel to tell Netanyahoo to stop what he was doing and to end his massacres in Gaza. But they were not willing to do that.
Many, many people in Gaza, and some of the hostages, died because of them.
The result was that, when it came to dealing with its citizens and soldiers held captive by the enemy, the State of Israel did indeed change its mindset. And so, another two years of war would pass before an agreement was signed that would bring back the last of the hostages from Gaza, alive or dead, with Hamas still standing.
Next month there will be elections in Israel. Netanyahoo is likely to lose. The publishing of the above quoted piece was certainly timed to further that.
But none of the potential winners of the election will follow a different policy. The Zionists, i.e. the majority of the Jewish Israeli populations, want to conquer all of Gaza, the West Bank and then some.
The only way out of the conflict is to dissolve their state.