As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu returns from a week-long trip to Washington, toting a fantastical and radical Gaza plan from the American president, he finds a country at a crossroads.
Will Israel return to war in Gaza? Or will the ceasefire hold, and more Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners see freedom?
US President Donald Trump wants America to control Gaza and for the 2.1 million Palestinians who live there to leave. The gaunt appearance of three Israelis released from Hamas captivity has traumatized the nation. A month-old ceasefire expires in just over two weeks and talks to extend it have barely begun, if at all.
Memories and images of the Holocaust have always loomed over the Israeli psyche. But now, at a critical time in the 16-month-long Gaza war, a battle to define the lessons of that slaughter is being played out across Israeli society.
‘Holocaust survivors’
On Saturday, Israelis gathered around their televisions as they have every weekend for a month, to see their compatriots released from more than a year of captivity in Gaza.
Hamas’ highly staged handover ceremonies are fraught. Just a week ago, many Israelis got flashbacks to the scenes of October 7, 2023, as militants pushed Arbel Yehoud through a jostling crowd.
But the nation was not prepared for the image of three skeletal figures – Ohad Ben Ami, Eli Sharabi and Or Levy – as Hamas militants led them from a van in Deir al-Balah this weekend. Emaciated, with sunken faces, the three appeared barely able to walk on their own.
To many, the image drew immediate parallels to the survivors of Nazi death camps. “The three who returned today are Holocaust survivors,” Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is still held in Gaza, said later that day.
When the prime minister expressed outrage at their appearance, the opposition leader Yair Lapid hit back: “Netanyahu, did you just now discover that the condition of the hostages is dire?”
Hamas and its allies continue to hold 73 hostages taken on October, of whom at least 34 are believed to be dead by the Israeli government.
Netanyahu has long been accused, with some evidence, of deliberately blocking previous ceasefire deals. In a tell-all interview with Israel’s Channel 12 on Thursday, the former defense minister Yoav Gallant – fired by Netanyahu last year after months of tension – agreed.
“This offer from early July that Hamas agreed to is identical to the offer now, only less good in some respects,” he said of the ceasefire agreement adopted in January. “There are fewer live hostages, unfortunately. More time has passed. And we are paying a heavier price here, because there are at least 110 more murderers who will be released in this process.”
Previous hostages have been freed in relative health – albeit, doctors say, malnourished and traumatized. With the release of the three gaunt men this weekend, Hamas appeared to be sending a message at a critical moment.
“Seeing the three hostages this morning as if they had been liberated from World War II concentration camps should compel us all to accelerate the release of all hostages,” the veteran Israeli negotiator-turned-peace activist Gershon Baskin said on Saturday.
It should be noted, of course, that many Palestinian prisoners who have been released from Israeli jails say that they were deliberately starved. Mohammad El-Halabi, an aid worker who was charged in 2016 with funneling money to Hamas in a case disputed by international human rights groups, was among those released earlier this month.
‘Total victory’
Just as some see in the Holocaust an argument to accelerate a deal for more hostages, others draw on a deep strain in Israeli culture – that, no matter what, Jews will never again be victims.
“We became a nation of victims – we were the perfect victim,” Netanyahu told Fox News this weekend. “I don’t seek wars – I seek to end wars. But if a war is foisted on me, like these monsters foisted on us, we will defeat them. And we will achieve total victory over them. No question about that.”
Speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day last year, he said that “a straight line, as sinister as can be, connects the murderers of old to the murderers of today.”
Though his foreign minister, Gideon Saar, also drew the comparison between the Holocaust and the gaunt Israeli hostages released this weekend, Netanyahu has so far avoided their comparison.
His extremist finance minister is similarly skeptical. “The suffering of our hostages in Hamas’ brutal captivity is heartbreaking,” Bezalel Smotrich said this weekend. “But comparisons to the Holocaust are a grave mistake and are based on the contempt for the Holocaust.”
His opinions carry weight. Smotrich is at the height of his powers. After Itamar Ben Gvir quit his post as national security minister over the Gaza ceasefire, Smotrich’s right-wing Religious Zionism party became the keystone to Netanyahu’s ability to govern.
He has also threatened to quit, if Israel doesn’t return to war in Gaza. It is little surprise that Netanyahu waited until this weekend – a week after a deadline for further ceasefire talks – to send a delegation to Qatar. Israeli media is rife with speculation that he is simply running out the clock until phase one of the deal expires on March 1.
“We’re going to get 75% of the living hostages out,” he told Fox News, before hastening to add: “Which – and I intend to get all of them out.”
If Netanyahu does return Israel to war in Gaza, Trump’s desire for Palestinians to leave will become unavoidable.
Trump’s plan is radical. If Palestinians were forced to leave – or encouraged, by prolonging dire humanitarian conditions – it would almost certainly constitute ethnic cleansing under international law. But Trump has recognized, in the simplistic way of a populist, that paying lip service to the two-state solution has only entrenched the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“We’re going to finish Hamas off,” Netanyahu said in that interview. “And what happens then? Do we leave the people there with all that devastation? Do you say, ‘Well, they have to stay in, confined?’ Because nobody lets them leave. Everybody describes Gaza as the biggest open-air prison in the world. You know why? Because they’re not allowed to leave.”
Never one to waste an opportunity, Ben Gvir – a far-right politician who carries a conviction of incitement to racism and supporting a terror organization – also seized on the hostages’ appearance. “This is a holocaust,” he said. “Encourage voluntary immigration now.”
Abeer Salman, Lauren Izso, Dana Karni and Eugenia Yosef contributed to this report.