The Decision that Tears Apart

For the third night in a row, thousands of protesters blocked traffic in Tel Aviv on Tuesday as rallies were held around Israel demanding a ceasefire agreement in exchange for the release of the hostages. These protests were prompted by the recovery of the bodies of six executed hostages from Gaza on Saturday night.

The underlying reason for the scale of the protests is something that marks Israelis out from many other people. As one protester put it on Sunday:

“So many people have come to the streets because what makes Israel different
from any country around the world is that we value one life,
and we are always willing to pay a very heavy price to bring people home.”

It is that value which led to Israel releasing 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in 2011 to secure the release of a single hostage, Gilad Shalit. But things have changed since the October 7th massacre carried out by Hamas.

A recent poll, conducted by The Jewish People Policy Institute, found that while 43 percent of Israelis supported the statement, “Israel should give up control of the Philadelphi Corridor to enable a hostage deal,” 49 percent agreed with the opposing statement, “Israel must not relinquish control of the Philadelphi Corridor even at the expense of a hostage deal.”

There seems to be an increasing number of Israelis who are taking a longer-term perspective and placing the defeat of their terrorist enemies as a higher priority than rescuing the hostages.

The debate over these two viewpoints was described on Monday evening as one which is tearing Israelis apart, not in terms of different parts of the country arguing, but in terms of most Israelis being torn apart within themselves.

With neither option being a good one, the Times of Israel’s senior analyst, Haviv Rettig Gur, said:

“There`s a real palpable torment that people are experiencing and, of course, that
was the purpose … of taking the hostages, the torturing of Israelis via these hostages.”

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