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Time running out for female captives, warns Mossad chief

Intelligence chief David Barnea said the female soldier hostages “don’t have time,” in Tuesday’s Security Cabinet meeting.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Mossad head David Barnea, backed by several ministers, pushed hard in Tuesday’s Security Cabinet meeting for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to the hostage deal now on the table, according to anonymous sources cited by various Hebrew media Thursday.

Referring to the five female soldiers in Hamas captivity, Barnea said that negotiating over recent red lines set by Netanyahu “could take long weeks. The girls in captivity don’t have time to wait for changes in the proposal under discussion.”

The sources did not say why Barnea pointed to the danger to the army lookouts rather than to the several dozen hostages in general who are thought to still be alive of the 120 in Hamas hands.

He was specifically against Netanyahu’s condition that Hamas fighters could not be allowed to go back to northern Gaza when fighting ceases, because “finding a mechanism to prevent the return of armed men” could be a drawn-out process.

The consensus of the IDF and intelligence agencies seems to be that there are many weapons still stashed in northern Gaza that the army never found, such as in the many tunnels that still crisscross the area, so that this condition is meaningless.

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Ministers Gila Gamliel and Miri Regev expressed their support for an agreement as well.

“There is no perfect deal but there is an opportunity here that must not be missed,” Regev reportedly said, calling the hostage situation “a bleeding wound” in Israeli society.

Gamliel noted that “women can give birth in nine months, and that is a disaster you can’t recover from,” in an obvious reference to the fear that the women are being raped by their captors.

She told Netanyahu that he should “follow it to the end and ignore all the coalition threats” from national-religious leaders Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

The pair back the prime minister’s oft-stated position that military pressure on Hamas is the best way to get the hostages back and even seek first the complete military defeat of the terrorist organization.

The ultra-Orthodox Shas party publicized a letter it has sent to Netanyahu that also told him to ignore those opposing the deal, mentioning the high value Judaism places on freeing captives.

“We are convinced that the conditions that have been created due to the military pressure and the targeted assassinations create an appropriate moment to reach a deal that safeguards the vital security interests of Israel and brings the hostages home,” the missive added.

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Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi also spoke in favor of signing the agreement as is and not add conditions, according to a Channel 12 report.

On Wednesday, Ynet reported that Gallant had said in private conversations that “If a deal is not signed in the next two weeks – the fate of the abductees is sealed.”

It was not clear why Gallant mentioned this specific time frame.

It is no secret that he, too, believes that fear of the right-wing parties bringing down the government over it is what is holding Netanyahu back.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday the families of the five soldiers forcibly taken from the Nahal Oz base held a press conference Tuesday to demand that Netanyahu meet with them and sign off on a deal before his trip next week to the U.S. to address a joint session of Congress.

“First, close a deal,” they implored. “Then travel and return safely.”

They displayed pictures of the young women from the first days of their captivity that were taken from a video IDF forces had found in Gaza, which showed two with bandaged heads and chafe marks from handcuffs on all their wrists.