Hamas took greater than 200 folks hostage throughout its lethal rampage in Israeli border cities on Oct. 7, 2023. Among the many hostages are youngsters and the aged. Whereas 4 of them have been launched, the destiny of the remainder is unknown, as Qatar serves as an middleman in working to free the hostages. On this interview with Naomi Schalit, The Dialog U.S. senior politics and democracy editor, Gregory F. Treverton of USC Dornsife, a former chairman of the Nationwide Intelligence Council within the Obama administration, says most hostage-taking has particular targets. This one, says Treverton, “is mainly an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very completely different” – and really onerous to unravel.
How do folks in your area take into consideration hostage-taking? I’d think about that the sensation is, “Oh, my god, please let nothing like that occur.”
It’s an utter dilemma, as a result of on the one hand you are feeling for the hostages. And as we’ve seen prior to now, the Israelis have been ready to – and did – launch a thousand hostages to get one Israeli again.
Alternatively, if you do a deal to get hostages launched, you’re solely encouraging extra hostage-taking. So that you’re damned when you do and damned when you don’t. Consequently, each authorities, together with america, says, “We by no means take care of hostage-takers.” However in fact, all of them do – and so they need to.
I feel it’s one of many hardest components of being within the nationwide safety enterprise. You need to free the folks – however you’re additionally going to get criticized. Each time President Biden has gotten any individual out of Russia, folks have stated, “Oh, he’s paid too excessive a value” or “He’s rewarded hostage-taking,” and to some extent, that’s true. You’re mainly rewarding the hostage-takers. However we nonetheless need to take care of them. We need to get our folks out. And at some some level – because the Israelis have proven – they’re ready to pay nearly any value to get them again.
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Israel launched greater than 1,000 prisoners in 2011 in alternate for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, whom Hamas captured and held for 5 years. That is greater than 200 instances the variety of hostages, so how do you even take into consideration that?
Not less than in my skilled expertise, that is with out precedent. The closest parallel could be the 1976 Entebbe hijacking and hostage-taking by two Germans and two Palestinians on a flight from Tel Aviv to Paris. Hijackers held 103 Israeli hostages, as soon as they launched the 148 non-Israeli hostages. Hamas holds twice the variety of hostages, and in very, very completely different circumstances. In Entebbe, the Israeli authorities knew the place they had been, they had been in a single place – the airplane – which had been compelled to land in Entebbe, Uganda, after taking off from Tel Aviv. And that’s the place Israeli commandos had been capable of rescue the hostages.
In Gaza, we don’t know the place they’re. We all know for certain they’re scattered all through the tunnels, possible in numerous completely different small teams. Hamas will presumably then use them as shields if combating begins on the bottom. They may suppose that that will encourage the Israelis to not make a significant assault – to maintain Hamas from killing all of the hostages. We all know that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t eager on a significant floor assault, and this actually places the onus on the Israelis for the way the hostage state of affairs ends.
When you consider the historical past of hostage negotiations, do you see one thing that has any relevance to what’s occurring now?
It appears to me it’s a extremely completely different class. Even Entebbe was hostage-taking for some political purpose – the hijackers wished Israel to launch numerous prisoners who had been Palestinian. A colleague of mine used to say that the purpose of terrorism was to do the least quantity of violence with the most individuals watching it. However Entebbe was political theater, mainly, and this isn’t political theater. That is mainly an adjunct of warfare, and that makes it very completely different. It’s not the standard type of tit for tat, with “How a lot am I prepared to pay?” or “Can I take a hostage to get any individual else out?”

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What does Israel’s heavy bombing of Gaza and the start of a floor invasion inform you concerning the authorities’s strategy to the hostage state of affairs?
It suggests both that they’ve a fairly good repair on the place the hostages are positioned, which appears unlikely given the community of Hamas tunnels, or that they’ve determined they need to proceed in any case and can strive their finest to safeguard and free hostages as they go. Given the Hamas observe of utilizing civilians as human shields, the result is prone to be very ugly.
The place do you see this going?
I see no glad ending. I don’t suppose there’s a deal that Israel may conceivably make, given its personal politics. Or that Hamas would settle for. So it does appear to me that sooner or later there’s going to be that floor assault and the hostages are going to be caught in the course of it. I see nearly no different, given what Israel has pledged – to destroy Hamas. The Biden administration maintains that Israel doesn’t actually have a method. They’ve a want, which is to destroy Hamas. However that’s not a method for coping with the hostages or for Gaza after the assault.
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