National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegb called for an end to the war – Israel News

Head of the National Security Council Tzachi Hanegbi On May 29, 2024, he made a stunning prediction: that the war would have to continue for another seven months. Taking into account that the end of the war was to coincide with hostage dealHanegbi essentially played the role of prophet in this matter.

Was he a prophet, or did he already know something that outsiders could only guess at?

Although few observers knew what the military’s logic was for seven months, it later became clear that the plan was to hope for a Trump victory in the presidential election, which could lead to a more favorable global approach to the Palestinian issue, even if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu we may have to make concessions at a later date.

Netanyahu, in a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, even mentioned the impact of the timing of the presidential election on aspects of war decision-making and a possible hostage deal (though he did not specifically link hopes for a Trump victory to the timing of the end of the war.)

Since May 29, 192 IDF soldiers and dozens of hostages have been killed.

IDF troops operate in the Gaza Strip. January 11, 2025. (source: IDF SPOKESMAN’S DEPARTMENT)

Hostage deal if Israel leaves the Philadelphia Corridor

Multiple defense sources reported this Jerusalem Post Office around this time, and even more so in July (by which time all 24 organized Hamas battalions had been dismantled), that an agreement, eerily similar to the one likely to be announced soon, could be broken as long as Israel was willing to leave the Philadelphia Corridor following the first stage of the agreement and allowing most Gazans to return to northern Gaza through the Netzarim Corridor.

If there are differences between the current deal and then, it could be that Netanyahu can secure the release of 33 hostages in phase one now, whereas then in phase one he could only secure about 18 hostages.

If Israel maintains serious security perimeters after the end of the hostage deal, that could also matter.

And of course, diplomatic sources say that Hamas was simply not ready to finalize an agreement in May or July and lied to Israel at the time about the number of hostages alive or dead in an attempt to manipulate Israel into accepting fewer live hostages in advance.

If there was no deal because of Hamas, there wouldn’t be much to analyze.

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An interesting question will be that when some negotiators who are not bound by loyalty to Netanyahu finally publish their full narratives of the negotiations, will it prove that an agreement could have been reached before the deaths of 192 IDF and dozens of hostages?

If that happens, Netanyahu’s narrative will have to shift to the view that he wanted the agreement to happen closer to the time Trump took office to provide a more favorable post-war framework in Gaza and a better framework for normalization in Saudi Arabia.

Historians will then debate whether a post-war Gaza ruled by the Palestinian Authority with the UAE, Egypt, and a CIA takeover in early or mid-2024 would be better or worse than Netanyahu’s as-yet unclear plans for a post-war Gaza, which puts an emphasis on keeping the P.A. from afar.

Of course, there are several other important things that Israel and Netanyahu have achieved since July 2024: killing Hamas leaders Yahya Sinwar, Mohammed Deif and Ismail Haniyeh, striking Hezbollah and killing its leader Hassan Nasrallah, defaming certain aspects of the Iranian arsenal, and indirectly helping topple the Assad regime in Syria – this list is not exhaustive.

An objective analysis of what may have happened seven months ago versus what has happened will be difficult, if not impossible.

What we do know is that Hanegbi was confident enough to make a precise and public prediction on a seemingly random day in May.