Can God create a stone that He cannot lift? There is no answer to this philosophical question, but in Israel, an answer was recently provided to a similar question: can politicians tie their own hands behind their back in order to render themselves incapable of action?
In the past decade, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu received a confidential report aimed at preventing Israel from paying exorbitant ransoms in exchange for its captives and hostages abducted by terrorists. Israel was notably the first country to have an airplane hijacked, in 1968. To this day, the man in a suit seated next to the toilets in El Al’s business class is an air marshal. Israel also became recognized globally for its steadfast refusal to negotiate with terrorists. Over the years, forty-eight Israeli fighters and civilians have been killed in military operations to free hostages.
Few know this firsthand better than the current prime minister: Mr. Netanyahu, a former officer in Sayeret Matkal, the IDF’s elite reconnaissance unit, sustained a bullet injury in the arm while freeing a hijacked Sabena airplane in 1972. His brother, Yonatan, was killed four years later in a daring operation, in which Israeli commandos flew 2,500 miles to Uganda, and successfully freed over 100 Jewish hostages from Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe Airport.
But gradually, for reasons worthy of a doctorate, Israel began to pay increasingly exorbitant prices for its hostages. An El Al flight hijacked to Algiers, carrying 48 passengers, was freed in exchange for 24 female terrorists with no blood on their hands. The same price, 24 female terrorists, was paid 41 years later in return for video footage of an abducted soldier. Talk about dizzying inflation: what bought you a plane in the 1960s only got you a DVD in the 2000s.
Over the years, Israel abandoned all its principles. Once, it refused to negotiate with terrorists; today it does. Once, it agreed to exchange only bodies for bodies; today, it releases live terrorists. Once, it insisted on a proportional ratio of those released from both sides; today it sometimes releases a thousand terrorists in exchange for a single hostage. Once, it refused to release anyone convicted of murder; now it is a given that no security prisoner serving a life sentence will remain in prison forever.
The confidential report authored by the former President of the Supreme Court recommended legislation forbidding the disproportionate release of hostages. Only a single-digit number of terrorists would be exchanged for one Israeli, only bodies for bodies. The rationale was that if terrorist organizations knew they could not get much in return, their incentive would diminish accordingly.
However, the government did not dare tie its own hands. Absurdly enough, it did not want to jeopardize the prospects of freeing the abducted soldier Gilad Shalit. Since then, the recommendations have not been enacted into law, which is how we arrived at the hostage deal of January 2025, establishing a global precedent: for the first time, a state is paying a strategic price on the battlefield for the return of its citizens. Not only are two hundred murderers of hundreds of men, women, and children about to be released, but now the IDF is also withdrawing – even if only temporarily – from areas in Gaza captured at a high price in blood. It is retreating from the northern Gaza Strip that it conquered at the expense of over a hundred lives. The area that was cleared and evacuated over weeks is being repopulated by a million Gazans. The Netzarim Corridor, which split the Gaza Strip in two and was such a thorn in Hamas’s side, is being dismantled and evacuated.
How did this happen, and especially concerning Hamas? Despite half its operatives being eliminated, its leadership decimated, its tunnel networks disrupted, and its terrorist state largely conquered? Notably, Netanyahu wrote a book about how important it is not to give in terror, and Trump authored The Art of the Deal.
It happened because of a combination of factors: the outgoing President Biden was determined to bring an end to the war at any price – a war that had cost the Democratic party an election year. Prime Minister Netanyahu, facing crushing public pressure and a deep sense of guilt, needed to bring the hostages home. And Trump? He was eager to prove that he could succeed where his predecessor had failed. Worse still: Israel will be approaching the next phase of the negotiations stripped of assets, save an agreement to end the war. And that was exactly what Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind behind the plan, had envisioned. According to Western intelligence, while he hoped to cause Israel’s destruction, he was convinced that he could at least negotiate an end to the war in return for hostages. His vision may endure long after his elimination on an armchair in Rafah.
Seeing the hostages at home fills the heart with joy. No words can capture the profound relief at seeing men, women, children and elderly brought home from Hamas’s terror tunnels. Yet we dare not forget the devastating price extracted. Now is the moment to halt this surrender to terrorism, with the backing of the new administration in Washington, and send an unequivocal message to Hamas and every terror organization worldwide: the era of extortionate price gouging is over.
