“A prisoner exchange in which 6,000 Palestinian prisoners will be released will break the taboo that no Israeli government has approached in the past. It is now difficult to know whether such a step will gain broad public support, despite sympathy for the families of the kidnapped.”

Israeli analysts pointed out today, Sunday, that statements transmitted by the Israeli media about “senior political or military sources” without mentioning their identity should be questioned, in addition to caution against statements made by Israeli officials, even by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The political analyst in the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper, Nahum Barnea, said that the delay that occurred in implementing the second batch of the prisoner exchange deal yesterday leads to “three primary lessons.” First, “Hamas is still strong on the ground and Sinwar controls it. The statements about the collapse of Hamas were premature and expressed a wish rather than a sober vision of reality.”

He added, "Hamas's strength is translated into a bargaining force in exchange for the mediators and Israel, and the presentation of demands that include not only the center and south of the Strip, but also its north, most of which is under Israeli control. During the days of the ceasefire, it will only be strengthened according to Hamas' control there."

The second lesson is that “the agreement is not complete. More disagreements and blackmail tricks will appear in the coming days, which will turn into a nerve-wracking drama at the expense of the kidnapped. The fundamental lack of trust between Israel and Hamas is completely expected. The problem is that there is no mediating body that both sides fully trust and absolutely comply to it.

The third lesson is that “it is very difficult for the Israeli government to stop a deal like this after it has committed to it. Since its implementation begins, the power of feelings overpowers public discourse.” Any pause will be interpreted as disappointment, frustration, failure, and all the feelings that the government is wary of engaging in. The threat made yesterday, that if Hamas continues to obstruct the release, Israel will resume shooting, was hasty, hollow, and devoid of substance. “More is needed than this for such a dramatic step, so complex and affecting the lives of so many people, to be breached.”

In this context, Barnea pointed out that “allegations made by a ‘senior political source’ or a ‘senior security source’ in Israel should be treated with skepticism. Government officials are engaged in a struggle for personal and political survival in parallel with the management of the war.”

As an example of this, Barnea referred to Netanyahu’s statements during a joint press conference with the Minister of Defense, Yoav Galant, and a member of the war cabinet, Benny Gantz, last Wednesday. He claimed that Hamas pledged that representatives of the Red Cross would visit the Israeli hostages and prisoners in Gaza, and he took out a paper from his pocketed and read an item talking about it. Netanyahu wanted to show that he had achieved an “achievement” in knowing their conditions.

However, Barnea reported that he had examined the matter. “It became clear to me that there is a clause like this, but there is no pledge to implement it. Rather, both sides of the negotiations assumed during their work that these were useless words, a piece of paper through which the Israeli side wanted to convince Smotrich and his bloc to support the agreement or in order to persuade "The families of the kidnapped people should lower the tone of their voices. This is similar to the coalition's pledge in the past to eliminate Hamas. They pledged, but they did not pledge to implement it."

For his part, Amos Harel, a military analyst in Haaretz newspaper, held Hamas responsible for delaying the release of the Israeli hostages yesterday, saying that it should not surprise anyone. "It was clear in advance that the movement's leader, Yahya Sinwar, would attempt to wage psychological warfare against Israel. Hamas' performance yesterday should constitute a warning for the future."

According to Harel, “the implementation of the second pulse (yesterday) among the four pulses at this stage of the deal, is very far from the end of this story. It seems that there will be no ‘closure’ to the war. Many of the liberated returned without part of their family members, who were killed” in the Hamas attack (October 7), many others are still in captivity, and there is currently no settlement that guarantees the continuation of the process of liberating the Israeli prisoners and the continuation of the ceasefire, beyond the four days that the two sides agreed upon in advance.”

He pointed out Israel's pledge during the negotiations on the exchange deal to extend the truce for another day for every ten hostages released. He believed that Hamas would implement this, "but it cannot procrastinate forever."

Harel pointed out that there is a large group of prisoners in Gaza, “apparently numbering more than a hundred, whom it is likely that Hamas and other Palestinian factions will try to detain as bargaining chips in a larger deal in the future.”

He added, "In addition to Hamas's hope of achieving a long ceasefire, its intentions are clear, which is the final liberation of all the kidnapped people and the bodies that were taken to Gaza on the day of the attack, in exchange for the liberation of more than 6,000 Palestinian prisoners imprisoned in Israel," meaning the whitewashing of the occupation prisons.

Harel described such a prisoner exchange deal as "will break the taboo that no Israeli government has approached in the past. It is now difficult to know whether such a step will gain broad public support, despite the enormous sympathy for the suffering of the families of the kidnapped."

In this context, he predicted that "within a week, they in Israel will be forced to make a decision regarding the continuation of the war, if another deal is not reached."

The Israeli army threatened to shoot Palestinians returning to their homes in the northern Gaza Strip, but this threat did not prevent their return. The Israeli army also threatens that after the end of the current truce, it will resume the war, especially in the center and south of the Gaza Strip, where the vast majority of the Gaza Strip’s population is concentrated with massive crowding, in light of a major health crisis.

Harel pointed out that the current prisoner exchange deal came into effect following great American pressure. He added that US President Joe Biden presented Israel with a “dilemma” regarding the continuation of the war. "He acknowledged Israel's desire to eliminate the Hamas regime, but asked it to reduce the killing of civilians. In the emerging circumstances, it is not certain that both sides of this sentence are consistent with each other."