Yahya Sinwar, Hamas' leader in Gaza and the person with the final say on all matters, has already shown in the past that he knows how to bargain with the Israelis.
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Sinwar, who was released in the Gilad Schalit prisoner exchange – and who swore to his comrades remaining behind bars that he would do all in his power to secure their release – spent quite a few years in Israeli prisons, during which he also suffered a serious illness and received life-saving treatment.
He knows the depths of Israeli society's sensitivities and commitment to bringing its boys and girls home from the battlefield, dead or alive. It's wasn't a coincidence that even prior to Operation Guardian of the Walls, he abruptly revealed that significant progress had been made in indirect talks for a prisoner swap and that if Israel was serious a deal could be made within days.
Sinwar even stated the number of prisoners whose release Hamas was demanding in exchange for fallen IDF soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin – 1,111 Palestinian security prisoners currently in Israeli jails. By doing so, Sinwar is essentially trying to establish a new bar that symbolically and perceptually links the Schalit deal – which saw the release of 1,020 Palestinian terrorists for one Israeli soldier – to any future prisoner exchange.
There is another key reason why Sinwar is raising this issue specifically now: Israel doesn't intend to backtrack from its precondition that any progress toward a long-term ceasefire agreement in Gaza, which would include its rehabilitation and reconstruction, include the return of Israel's fallen soldiers and civilians in Hamas captivity. Israel also wants any such progress toward a long-term resolution to be conditioned on a mechanism of oversight with Egypt at the Rafah border crossing and the Palestinian Authority receiving and allocating the funds earmarked for Gaza's rehabilitation.
Sinwar understands that Israel intends to insist on tying Gaza's recovery to a deal that returns its fallen soldiers and captive civilians, and the terrorist group has even received messages from senior Egyptian intelligence officials that the Egyptian mediators support the Israeli demand. Hence Sinwar is striving to disconnect the prisoner issue from the matter of Gaza's rehabilitation. To this end, he is sparking public debate in Israeli society that he hopes will lead to pressure on the government – amid a presumed power shift in Israel – to implement a prisoner swap parallel to Gaza's rehabilitation yet unrelated to a long-term ceasefire deal.
Additionally, Sinwar, along with Hamas' senior leadership in Gaza, is aware that despite the Israeli-American-Egyptian desire to onboard the Palestinian Authority as a key player in the process of rebuilding and reshaping Gaza by giving it control of the funds and materials earmarked for the Strip, PA officials in Ramallah are signaling their complete disinterest in partaking in the process. A senior official in PA President Mahmoud Abbas' bureau said: "We have enough unnecessary and ineffective oversight mechanisms in the West Bank. We have no need for another one in Gaza. Let Hamas rack its own brain over the destruction it brought on Gaza. We are not its janitors for cleaning up its mess."
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