If Israelis had heard how the president of the United States spoke about the hostages, it’s doubtful that he would have received such thunderous cheers at Hostages Square last Saturday night. To say they were a secondary concern for him would be an understatement—and even that understates it. President Donald Trump favored eliminating Hamas the American way, and 20 living hostages (he was always confused about their number and minimized it) seemed to him a marginal matter, collateral damage.
Only belatedly did he perceive how strategic the issue was for the Israelis, and therefore for their government as well. In one of the discussions before the second phase of the Israeli army’s offensive on Gaza City began in mid-2025, Benjamin Netanyahu spoke about the scar that would remain in Israeli society if the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conquered Gaza City at the cost of the hostages’ lives. Allow me to guess that he never really believed that moment would come.
Indeed, in recent months, the assessment by Netanyahu and his minister of strategic affairs, Ron Dermer, was that an operation to conquer Gaza City, if it happened, most certainly would not reach completion. Here is the inside story.
