world news
Uzi Dayan: Civilian control of Gaza, direct talks with Hamas could’ve gotten better, faster deal
As a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas is expected to be signed, former deputy IDF chief Maj. Gen. (res.) Uzi Dayan has told the Jerusalem Post that more hostages could have been returned alive and faster if Israel had chosen to seize full civilian control of Gaza from the start as well as to negotiate directly with Hamas.
He said there have been a limited number of choices for handling the situation after October 7, but that “One would have been to conquer Gaza, so that it looks like Germany after 1945 and we stay there. This would not just be military control, but also control of food, water, gas, the health sector, and electricity.”
“We needed both to beat Hamas and to return the hostages. Civilian control would have gotten us closer to the hostages more rapidly,” he said.
Dayan’s ideas on the issue, despite being politically right-wing throughout his post IDF years, in some areas outflank traditional right-wing and left-wing views.On one hand, his idea to take full civilian control of Gaza, not just military control and not just what actually happened (regular military penetrations, but not even full military control) outflanks Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s policy from the right.
On the other hand, his idea to then negotiate directly with the terror group Hamas, outflanks many on the left who never suggested such a controversial mechanism for resolving the current conflict.
In terms of chronology, Dayan’s ideas are flexible: he believes that Israel could have started taking civilian control of many Gaza areas on a rolling basis at the start of the war, while showing an openness also near the start to negotiate directly with Hamas for the return of its hostages.
If Hamas had been willing to give back more hostages, Israel then could have halted its advance. If Hamas was unwilling to give back more hostages, then Israel could have continued its advance.
Once Israel would have taken both military and civilian control over all Gaza, including dominating the food, water, electricity, health, and gas sectors, Jerusalem would have had much more powerful and constant pressure on Hamas in terms of its viability to govern than it ever achieved during the current war.
In practice, only some Israeli officials started talking about taking away Hamas civilian control in January-February 2024, and no one ever arrived at a concrete plan for doing so, let alone having the IDF do so.
Pressed that if Israel took civilian control this would have incurred untold tens of hundreds of billions of dollars of debt from the Jewish state as well as unprecedented delegitimization worldwide, he responded, “We would have found someone else to pay. Some say we should block them from receiving food – No! We should control these things and since anyway people see us as responsible. At least if we manage these issues, we would have broken apart Hamas’s mechanisms of control.”
Instead, he said the government and IDF decided to, “kill the Hamas leadership and destroy their organization, and destroy many of their fighters but then get out of the area,” which each time the IDF left an area allowed Hamas to immediately return its civilian control, especially over food.
Dayan cautioned, “We would not stay there forever. I am against returning Jewish settlements to Gaza. We don’t want to manage the Palestinians in the long-term because of the demographics. We need to be a Jewish and democratic state. We need a decisive Jewish majority, which is also legal.”
Looking into the future of his scenario or even from the current deal, he said, “Who will take over Gaza in the future from the IDF – frankly, I don’t know, but we want that whoever gets it – receives it from us,” including Israel having the ability to influence the next stages of the process.
“They should not receive it from UNRWA or from tribal clans in Gaza, and not from the Palestinian Authority,” he said in rejecting the idea of the PA governing Gaza along with others which was suggested by the US, EU allies, and supported by much of the current Israeli defense establishment.
Addressing other ideas for how to have best addressed the goals of defeating Hamas and returning the hostages, he stated, “I was against [former national security council chief] Giora Eiland’s [General’s Plan to evacuate all civilians from northern Gaza and cut that area off from the rest of Gaza] – not because of questions about ethics, but because it would not have worked. But if you controlled all of Gaza,” this could have worked.
“You would have all of the leverage. You don’t need to even say [out loud] that you won’t let some supplies in, because [the other side understands] that you are controlling these matters all of the time,” said the former IDF deputy chief.
Further, he stated, “In Germany in 1945, no one dealt with how much food there would be for Germans who supported the Nazis. Just later there was a Marshal Plan – and it was clear who had the power.”
Questioned about the potential for such a wider invasion and putting a quicker and greater crunch on Hamas for endangering the hostages lives given that Israel’s more limited invasion as is has killed or pressured Hamas to killed some several dozen hostages, he responded, “This could have endangered the hostages, but the alternatives have endangered them more,” with it already being public that the best case scenario at the end of the current deal would be for around half of the original 250 hostages to return alive.
Supporting his argument for having negotiated directly with Hamas and not through US, Qatari, and Egyptian mediators, he said, “We have no direct negotiations with Hamas. We don’t know exactly where the hostages are. For many, we haven’t gotten signs of life.”
“We say we want all of the hostages back and we know who is missing but we don’t know who is alive and who Hamas is specifically holding” versus other Gaza terror groups.
“Hamas can also say ‘I don’t have this person or I don’t have these numbers – they are all spread out. I don’t have full control over all of them. You attacked Gaza – so maybe you killed more of them’,” he warned.
Moreover, he said that “with any deal with Hamas regarding the hostages, they are not interested in getting to the end of the deal, no matter what they receive. Because let’s say we leave Gaza completely and end the war. For Hamas, the next day they can kill hostages and say there are no more. Or they can fire two rockets into the Mediterranean Sea off Tel Aviv and declare ‘we are still alive.’ There is an asymmetry: for us to win, we need to destroy him. For them to win, they just need to survive.”
Direct negotiations would have been better
In other words, Dayan said that only through direct negotiations could Israel have learned much faster what the true status of the Hamas hostages was and hold its feet to the fire enough that it would not be able to play all sorts of complex negotiation games.
Dayan said that in his extensive experience in negotiations with the Palestinians, Jordan, Syria, and others, “we do best with direct negotiations. I never saw a US intervention where it was good for us. With Jordan, the US wasn’t even in the room or out of the room, whereas with the [failed 1990s] negotiations with Syria, the US was always in the room. When the US intervenes, it is not as good for whoever is stronger,” because Washington tries to balance the playing field.
He added that US backing for Israel and presence in the region is crucial on many levels, just not necessarily for negotiations with hostile parties.
Pressed about how Israel could have gotten Hamas to agree to direct negotiations given it would have been validly concerned that Jerusalem might seek to kill some of the negotiators (which Israel eventually did), he responded, “if Hamas would say ‘we can’t do this while under attack,’ then we would have said back to them say, ‘ok what do you want,’, but both sides would understand that Hamas was under pressure.
In addition to Dayan, a number of observers have noted that throughout the negotiations, Hamas often used Qatar or Egypt to mislead Israel about its true stances, and direct negotiations, however controversial, might have taken away this trick.
Dayan also downplayed the impact of incoming president Donald Trump on Hamas. He said that Trump had clearly heavily pressured Israel about the deal, but that given that he would have been unwilling to use American military power against Hamas and had no direct economic tools on the Gazan terror group, that direct talks with full Israeli military and civilian control would have gotten a much better deal and much sooner.
After Trump took office as US President, reports were published that the new administration is demanding the deportation of the terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, who was responsible for the attack of the Sbarro restaurant, from Jordanian territory. Tamimi was released in the Gilad Shalit deal in 2011 after being sentenced to 16 life sentences.
In 2017, the US Department of Justice published a criminal complaint and issued an arrest warrant against al-Tamimi. The FBI added her to the top of its most wanted list and offered a cash reward for her extradition and prosecution.
Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, who represents the family of Channa Nachenberg, an American citizen who was critically injured in the attack at the Sbarro restaurant, is now revealing the actions taken behind the scenes, and that she was even called to an emergency meeting with the US Department of Justice’s counterterrorism task force.
The meeting was at the King David Hotel and attended by U.S. federal prosecutors and the FBI. At the meeting the American officials revealed that they were making public an indictment of Hamas terrorist Ahlam al-Tamimi who had assisted in the bombing of Sbarros.Al-Tamimi had been released from an Israeli prison during a prisoner release in exchange for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit and was living in Jordan. Al-Tamimi hosted a popular radio talk show where she regularly boasted about her membership in Hamas and the bombing she was involved in in Jerusalem.
Although the U.S. had demanded that Jordan extradite the freed terrorist responsible for the murder of 2 U.S. citizens and the maiming of many others such as Nachenberg, the Hashemite Kingdom refused. Jordan claimed there was no extradition treaty between Amaan and Washington.
Now as a prerequisite to meeting with President Trump the U.S. has demanded that King Hussein either deport the terrorist to a third country or extradite her to the U.S.
According to attorney Darshan-Leitner: “We have been waiting since the terrorist’s release in 2011 for the Americans to really demand her extradition. We were hopeful that this unrepentant terrorist murderer who has much Israeli and American blood on her hands, will finally be locked up, but this time with no chance of freedom. It’s outrageous that she was released by Israel and was allowed to live a life of comfort and freedom in Jordan. God willing she’ll finally face a real punishment for her Jew hatred and the lives she destroyed.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Egypt’s foreign minister on Tuesday it was important to ensure Hamas terrorists can never govern Gaza again, the State Department said, with their call coming after President Donald Trump suggested Egypt and Jordan should take more Palestinians.
Trump on Saturday floated a plan to “clean out” Gaza, where Israel’s war has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis, in comments that echoed long-standing Palestinian fears of being permanently driven from their homes.
The suggestion by Trump was not mentioned in the US State Department statement released on Tuesday after the call between Rubio and Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty.
Jordan and Egypt had pushed back over the weekend after Trump’s comments that they should take in Palestinians from Gaza. Asked if this was a temporary or long-term solution, Trump had said: “Could be either.”“He (Rubio) also reinforced the importance of holding Hamas accountable,” the State Department said after Tuesday’s call.
“The Secretary reiterated the importance of close cooperation to advance post-conflict planning to ensure Hamas can never govern Gaza or threaten Israel again.”
Context
Rubio held a call a day earlier with Jordan’s King Abdullah, and the US statement after that call, too, did not mention Trump’s remarks on Palestinian displacement.
The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7, 2023, when Palestinian Hamas terrorists attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
An Israeli aircraft attacked in the Tulkarm area as part of an IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) joint operation, the military announced on Monday.
Later reports in Israeli media clarified that the airstrike occurred in the Nur a-Shams refugee camp.
Footage from the scene indicates that a car was destroyed, leading to an explosive fire with a pillar of smoke rising into the sky.
Two Palestinians were in the vehicle at the time of the airstrike, according to Palestinians quoted in Israeli media.The Palestinian Health Ministry reported that one of the passengers was killed and the other was moderately injured, according to Israeli media reports.
Wider context
This comes amid the IDF’s Operation Iron Wall, aiming to remove Palestinian terrorists from Jenin and the wider area.
The IDF began a wide-ranging operation on Palestinian terror in Jenin last Tuesday, killing several terrorists in the mission meant to last a minimum of several days and potentially much longer.
The campaign, dubbed “Operation Iron Wall,” includes drones and helicopter air support. There were also reportedly tanks in the vicinity – although not entering Jenin – and the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), Duvdevan, Egoz, other special forces, and engineering forces from Battalion 90 were all involved.
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