Israel’s hostage agony finally ends — but not its – Latest News
On Monday, the restoration of the physique of Israeli Master Sgt. Ran Gvili — the final remaining hostage held in Gaza — marked a defining second in its battle towards Hamas.
It fulfilled a sacred national vow for the Jewish state.
And it delivered a stark message to Israel’s enemies: This is a nation whose resolve, unity and credibility ought to by no means be doubted.
Gvili, a 24-year-old police officer, was home recovering from a damaged shoulder when sirens pierced the daybreak on Oct. 7, 2023.
Ignoring his damage, he rushed to Israel’s southern border, the place he killed more than a dozen Hamas terrorists earlier than falling in battle.
His physique was dragged into Gaza, together with dozens of Israelis seized within the bloodbath.
While Hamas in the end returned most of the hostages beneath President Donald Trump’s Gaza framework, it withheld Gvili’s stays — a closing act of cruelty.
So Israel hunted them down.
Working via the weekend, IDF models fused intelligence, surveillance and ground operations to pinpoint a northern Gaza cemetery.
Under risk of sniper fire, troopers and forensic groups excavated the positioning till they uncovered Gvili’s physique and made a optimistic identification.
“There are no more hostages in Gaza,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu introduced to the Knesset, dramatically eradicating the yellow ribbon pin he has worn in solidarity with the households of the lacking.
Then got here the pledge: “The other missions, we shall also fulfill.”
Israel, he stated, is “now at the threshold of the next stage: Dismantling Hamas’ military capabilities and demilitarizing the Gaza Strip.”
“The next stage,” he emphasised, “is not reconstruction.”
That means dismantling Hamas, demilitarizing Gaza, and completely eliminating the fear risk — targets embedded in Trump’s 20-point peace plan.
The world ought to take Israel at its phrase.
This is a nation that mobilized its citizen military on an unprecedented scale, fought house-to-house via Hamas’ booby-trapped strongholds and absorbed staggering losses.
A nation prepared to sacrifice this a lot will not settle for half-measures, beauty victories or non permanent fixes.
Nor ought to it.
Yet Hamas nonetheless calls for a full Israeli withdrawal and renewed entry to the skin world through the Gaza-Egypt border, clinging to the phantasm that it could possibly survive, regroup and strike again.
That fantasy should be crushed.
Trump on Monday made it clear he’s on the identical web page as Israel in that regard.
“Now we have to disarm Hamas,” he said after Gvili’s physique was recovered.
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Yet Hamas itself pointed to Gvili’s mournful homecoming as proof that it’s able to play a function in “facilitating the work” of Gaza’s new transitional authorities.
This can’t occur.
Its call to be concerned with Gaza’s new authorities represents a harmful bid for the terrorist group’s survival beneath a new identify.
No one in Washington must be fooled.
The United States ought to not grant these vicious terrorists who perpetrated the worst homicide of Jews in a single day for the reason that Holocaust any say in Gaza’s future.
Trump should not permit these killers a probability to slyly dodge disarmament by integrating itself into the administration of Palestinian technocrats now tasked with working the strip.
Additionally, the regional mediators — Qatar, Egypt and Turkey — should stop indulging Hamas and begin confronting it.
In so doing, they need to reassess their own reflexive hostility towards Israel and acknowledge the area’s rising actuality: Israel is now the Middle East’s preeminent army and ethical energy.
Trump and his administration deserves credit for making hostage restoration a strategic precedence.
But Washington should additionally stay clear-eyed: Hamas’ guarantees to help rebuild and govern Gaza are nugatory.
A jihadist group whose core mission is Israel’s destruction can’t be a accomplice in peace.
This is not a symmetrical battle — and any diplomatic framework that pretends in any other case is doomed.
The basis of a lasting settlement should be Israel’s existential security: Hamas dismantled, Gaza demilitarized, and Iran’s terror networks and nuclear and ballistic missile applications crushed.
Not finally. Permanently.
Israel will obtain these targets — with America’s help, or with out it.
Anyone of sound conscience ought to help ship them. Or on the very least, ought to stand apart.
Mark Dubowitz is chief govt of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
