Israel's govt issues 'death sentence' to remaining captives

Israel's military leadership has acknowledged that full occupation of Gaza will imperil the remaining captives. But Netanyahu's government seems to want them dead.

Above: an Al-Qassam Brigades image reading in Hebrew: “They eat what we eat, and drink what we drink.”

By Max Blumenthal

In June 2024, after Israel's army slaughtered over 200 civilians in Gaza’s Nuseirat Refugee Camp, including several execution style killings to extricate a hostage, Noa Argamani, the Al-Qassam Brigades announced a new policy: if Israel soldiers came too close to areas where captives were held, the prisoners would lose their lives. Israel’s refusal to heed this policy led to the killing of Hersh Goldberg-Polin and five others just over two months later.

Now, in a fit of desperation, after failing to force the hand of Hamas through imposed famine and previous campaigns of military pressure, Israel’s security cabinet has approved plans to ethnically cleanse the whole of Gaza City and occupy urban areas where captives might be located. Eyal Zamir, the Israeli army chief of staff, has warned Israel's security cabinet that the full conquest of Gaza would place the captives' lives in peril. “The deeper we go into sensitive areas, the greater the risk to the hostages,” he acknowledged, while still offering support for the escalation.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum that advocates for the captives went even further, proclaiming that “the Israeli government sentenced the living hostages to death and the fallen hostages to disappearance” by announcing a takeover of Gaza.

Hamas, too, has cautioned that the maximalist Israeli plan will place the ten or so remaining captives in mortal danger. "Netanyahu's plans to expand the aggression confirm beyond any doubt that he seeks to get rid of his captives and sacrifice them," the Palestinian resistance group declared.

For the most influential members of Israel’s messianic-fascist government, the captives present a final obstacle to the “total victory” agenda, which can only be fulfilled with the defeat of Hamas, the annexation of northern Gaza and the expulsion of much of Gaza’s population. Bezalel Smotrich, the fanatical Finance Minister who forms the linchpin of Netanyahu’s coalition, has openly argued that returning the captives through negotiations was “not the most important thing.”

Israel’s Channel 13 reported this August 7 that Smotrich sabotaged a hostage deal backed by Israel’s military-intelligence apparatus, joining with Netanyahu to unleash carnage across Gaza in flagrant violation of a US-brokered ceasefire. Now, with the full conquest of Gaza on the horizon, he and his allies are presented with the tantalizing opportunity to wipe out the remaining Israeli captives in Gaza. In their view, this would fully deprive Hamas of its negotiating leverage, and clear the way to triumph.

Israel’s military first demonstrated its willingness to kill large numbers of its own citizens when it implemented the “mass Hannibal” directive on October 7, 2023. The purpose of the free fire orders, which led to the destruction of scores of vehicles containing Jewish Israeli captives heading toward Gaza, and the killing of possibly hundreds of Israeli citizens, was to limit the enemy’s ability to extract political concessions through a hostage deal. In the months that followed, Israeli strikes killed at least 20 captives inside Gaza and wounded or threatened over 50 others, according to an investigation by Haaretz. The Israeli paper neglected to include the wife and young children of Yarden Bibas, a former captive who acknowledged while in captivity that his family had been killed by an Israeli airstrike.

For Israel’s government, the handful of captives remaining inside Gaza are an inconvenient political obstacle to “total victory.” The mass Hannibal Directive that began on October 7 may soon be completed.