$5 million of pure genius
In the same way the Abraham Accords broke the taboo on marginalising the Palestinian Arabs, so Netanyahu’s $5 million offer will break the taboo on abandoning the struggle.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is said to be planning to offer anyone who is currently holding any of the 101 Israeli hostages still held in Gaza five million dollars for each hostage they release. Officials are supposedly working on publishing the official offer on various platforms in order to convince those holding the hostages to release them, promising that in return they will receive five million dollars for each hostage, as well as freedom of passage for the purpose of exile to a third country. (Arutz7)
There are several dimensions to this offer that are unlikely to be discussed in the public domain.
1. The first pertains to securing the freedom of the people held captive for over a year. Ordinarily, I would agree with those who say that paying for hostages encourages the taking of hostages, except that the people held by Hamas are not necessarily hostages. They are, according to Islam, which is the way Hamas sees them, the spoils of war—a chapter in the Qur’an even bears that title—and their captors may do any of the following with them (Muslim apologists will claim that only the caliph may decide which):
a. Kill them
b. Free them without anything in return
c. Free them in return of freeing Muslim POWs (Islamic term for imprisoned jihad terrorists)
d. Charge for their freedom (hostages)
e. Enslave them
Clearly, from Hamas’s perspective, a), c) and d) are the only options in play, although most of the women and girls would, in the meantime, have been subjected to e) and worse, until their final fate is decided.
The kind of money, plus safe passage, that the Prime Minister is offering has two effects on the Muslims: it puts enormous pressure on them to move all their captives into the hostage category. The arguments between them now moves from which of the five fates to dispense to whom, to whether they should sell their principles and allow the Jews to dictate Shari’a. This offer comes at a time when the captors are already under enormous psychological and physical pressure.
2. There is so much pressure on Hamas’s last hold-outs that from their side, the bargain looks quite different to the way it might look to Israelis: their leaders are all dead; most of their comrades are dead; their organisation, such as remains of it, is moribund; there is nothing left of Gaza; there will soon be nothing left of UNWRA; they cannot escape into Egypt; and the IDF is closing in. In short, there is no central leadership who can negotiate the exchange of captives for “Muslim POWs”.
So by default, it falls to them to get the most that they can “for the Muslims”. The options running though their minds are: a) Hold out and die with the hostages; b) Hand over the hostages and get shot immediately; c) Hand over the hostages and get yourself and what’s left of your family safely out of Gaza; d) Hand over the hostages and get yourself and what’s left of your family safely out of Gaza with $5 million.
What are the odds? To Hell with the virgins.
One can assume that Hamas has not yet paid out the millions of dollars or handed over the luxury apartments they offered for each captive hauled into Gaza, and the likelihood of these terrorists ever seeing their part of the bargain is now nil. They all see a chance for making an even bigger killing after all, if you’ll excuse the pun.
The arguments they’ll be having with themselves as they lie awake at night will be over the logistics of getting their hands on 10, 15 or 20 million dollars, instead of just five. Why not? Every one of them will know that each of their comrades is thinking exactly the same thing. The poison will be working. Any terrorist who hands over more than one hostage, we can be sure, got his hands on the others by, well, you know… doing a bit of IDF stuff. In short, there is every chance here that Netanyahu’s plan will succeed.
3. There will be heated arguments, even fights, amongst the Palestinian Arabs outside of Gaza about the purity of their principles, their "Palestinian honour:, the nobility of the struggle, the Gazans who accept will be traitors to the cause, they will never take a penny of such filthy money, their sacred bargain with Allah, etc., etc., but each and every one of them will be hurling the vilest curses and threats at the evil, conniving Jews, and protesting too much.
Again, though, when they lie awake at night, they’ll be burning with regret that they did not make this, that or the other choice at some point in the past, which would have put them in line for $5 million today. Regret will quickly become envy. Their protests will quickly become less bullish and die down, and turn to quiet resentment that the Jews offered all this money to the Gazans and not to them, because now the Gazans can get out of Gaza, but they are stuck in the PA or in some godforsaken refugee camp in a neighbouring Arab state. Here, too, the poison will be working.
4. In the same way the Abraham Accords broke the taboo on marginalising the Palestinian Arabs, so Netanyahu’s $5 million offer will break the taboo on abandoning the struggle. If the Israelis can put the right discretionary infrastructure in place, the same principle applied to Judea and Samaria will see problems there quickly solve themselves. Neighbours will start noticing, here and there, entire homes with their lights on, where they have not seen anyone for a while. Teachers will start noticing pupils who have been absent for a while. Every now and then, a worker disappears from work. And everyone will know, because they will all have been making the same plans, every disappearance piling on more pressure for them to act, before the Jews stop the offers. The fat cats of Fatah will know that the game is up, and they’ll retire to someplace nice to enjoy their billions while they still can.
Now let us assume, as many fear, that Palestinian Arabs will be encouraged to take Israeli hostages in exchange for safe passage out of either Gaza or Judea and Samaria. In such cases, because they are actually hostages, unlike those held in Gaza, who may be hostages, but almost certainly are not, such Palestinian Arabs would have every reason not to harm their hostages. In a sense, this would a cheerless win for Israel, but a win nonetheless. Also, stiffening the penalties for such kidnapping could prove counter-productive, as it provides an easy path to pay-for-slay money. The real advantage of this for the Jewish state would be a strong disincentive against admitting Palestinian Arabs into Israel and Area C.
One way of making Netanyahu’s plan transferable to Judea and Samaria without nasty side-effects, would be to repackage it as simply “Assisted Safe Passage,” the assistance being, say, $10,000 for a solo emigrant, $250,000 for a family of twenty, $500,000 for a family of forty-five, and so forth. And, of course, all their fixed property goes to Jews. The humiliation of the ummah at such a loss of “Muslim land” in “Falastin” by the hand of Palestinians themselves might begin to cancel out some of the honour accrued through the decades-long accumulation of “Muslim land” in the West in the form of mosques and Islamic centres.
