Hamas’s execution of six hostages may represent a new phase in the Israel–Hamas war: an effort to divide Israeli society.
The terrorist organization, which has ruled the Gaza Strip since 2007 and started the war with its Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in Israel, said after the Israeli army discovered the hostages’ bodies on Aug. 31 that it has issued new instructions to those guarding the remaining hostages.
The new orders were issued after Israel’s successful rescue of four hostages in Nuseirat in June, Hamas spokesman Hudhaifa Kahlout, known by the nom de guerre Abu Obeida, said.
“We say to everyone clearly that after the Nuseirat incident, new instructions were issued to the mujahedeen assigned to guard the prisoners regarding dealing with them if the occupation army approached their place of detention,” Kahlout said on Sept. 2.
Israel said it believes the terror group has given standing orders to those guarding the hostages to kill them if they think Israeli forces are nearing.
The bodies of the six killed hostages—Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi—were found on Aug. 31 in a tunnel underneath Rafah.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at a press conference on Sept. 2 that the six had all been shot in the back of the head.
Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s spokesman, said on Sept. 1 that the army found the bodies in a tunnel about a kilometer from the one in which the army rescued Farhan Alkadi a few days earlier.
“Since Farhan’s identification, the forces have been instructed to act with extra caution, even more so than usual, understanding that there might be additional hostages in the area,” Hagari said. “We did not have information on the exact location of the hostages. Combat was ongoing above ground, and the troops eliminated terrorists even during the battles there yesterday.”
There are conflicting reports about when they were shot. Autopsies on Sept. 1 determined they'd been killed 48 to 72 hours prior, late on Aug. 29 or early on Aug. 30.
But the IDF’s preliminary investigation suggested that Hamas lookouts outside the tunnel spotted IDF soldiers approaching on Aug. 31, leading to the hostages’ execution and the terrorists’ escape.
How Hamas handles the hostages speaks to its deeper motivations, Israeli military analyst Elliot Chodoff told The Epoch Times.
Unlike earlier hostage killings, Hamas left their bodies to be found “to drive a wedge into Israeli society,” Chodoff said.
Chodoff divided kidnappings into two types.
In a purely criminal kidnapping, he said, such as one holding a person for ransom, the kidnapper wants something in exchange, such as money.
The exchange is straightforward, he said. It’s in a kidnapper’s interest to protect hostages, to be able to provide proof of their well-being and to preserve their trading value.
In another kind of kidnapping, though, that’s not the motivation, Chodoff said. A totalitarian regime may take hostages to ensure a population’s good behavior, threatening to kill them if the subject population fights back.
Hamas’s tactics betray a mixture of the two motivations, but more the second one, he said. The terrorist group in November 2023 traded 105 hostages for 240 Palestinian prisoners held by the Israelis.
Israel so values the Israeli hostages that it works even to recover the bodies of the dead ones, he said.
Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza, didn’t value highly the earlier hostages he traded back, he said.
“He had too many hostages for his needs, well over 200 to begin with,” Chodoff said. “He knows he doesn’t need 200 hostages for either negotiating or for his insurance policy. So the first 100 were kind of a giveaway.”
Sinwar, he said, saw it as a “take what we can get” situation, squeezing out a few days of cease-fire and getting some Palestinians released.
Had Hamas really valued the exchange, he said, Sinwar could have kept it up, buying a few more days of cease-fire each time he “dribbled out” a few hostages in exchange for “a whole bunch of” Palestinian prisoners.”
Hamas didn’t do that, he said.
“They violated the agreement, and the whole thing basically collapsed,” he said.
“That was the first indication that the hostage exchange, for the good of the terrorists being held in Israeli prisons, was really not their primary purpose.”
Looking at the killing of the six hostages specifically, Chodoff said, the terrorists neither shot them in desperation before fighting to the death and becoming martyrs themselves nor took the hostages with them, alive or dead.
Israel has usually had to work to find bodies, developing intelligence from interrogations, captured computers, and other sources and then having to search for them, he said.
“[In this case], they murdered them and left their bodies intentionally as a message to Israel that [they were] now at a stage where [they were] going to start killing hostages. Which, by the way, in hostage-taking situations, is typically the trigger for the SWAT teams to go in, because anybody you can save, you save,” he said.
Hamas is saying, he said, “ ‘we’ve gone into a different phase. We’re going to murder hostages. Here’s the evidence. We left them for you with execution-style murder methods. And’—and this is something Hamas does very well—‘we’re going to drive a wedge into Israeli society between those who call for the hostages’ release at any cost, including Hamas victory, and those who say, you know, we want the hostages back, it’s important to get them out, but not at any cost.’”
The wedge was visible on Sept. 2, with massive demonstrations in Israel and even a one-day general strike called by the nation’s biggest labor union demanding Netanyahu do more to make a deal for the hostages’ return.
The Israeli government reacted, with Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich accusing the union of playing into the hands of Hamas.
Kahlout’s own words confirm the wedge strategy:
“Netanyahu’s insistence to free prisoners through military pressure, instead of sealing a deal, means they will be returned to their families in shrouds,” Kahlout said. “Their families must choose whether they want them dead or alive,” he said.
Hamas has released videos taken of the hostages before their murder in which they blame Netanyahu both for their capture and their ongoing captivity, demand their release be negotiated, and urge Israelis to demonstrate in favor of it.
They certainly spoke under duress in videos produced by those about to kill them. One of the hostages, Eden Yerushalmi, weighed only 79 pounds when her body was found.
While many are under the impression that a deal has been close to completion recently, Chodoff said he doesn’t believe that’s true.
“We’ve never been close to a deal. We’ve been close to an agreement about a framework to begin to negotiate a deal. There’s a huge difference. It means that Hamas could always step back, they could always step out, they can always say no at the last minute,” he said.
