The Hamas leader, Yahya Sinwar, might have told his men to kill all the Israeli hostages abducted on Oct 7 in case he died, according to Israel’s leading hostage negotiator Gershon Baskin.
It is a moment of either opportunity or a moment of doom,” Baskin, who witnessed, in 2011, the release of Sinwar along with 1,026 other Palestinian prisoners in exchange for kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, told The Telegraph.
According to the hostage negotiator, death could mean a “moment of doom” in the case of Sinwar because “there were rumors that Sinwar instructed people holding hostages that, should he be killed, they should kill their hostages.”
Baskin said he could neither confirm nor deny the rumor but that it must be taken “seriously” because, he said, the group had shown no compunction over executing six hostages.
At the end of August, the six hostages were executed in a particularly gruesome manner after the IDF closed in on the tunnel in which they were being held.
“We saw the six hostages killed when Israel was entering the tunnel. That could be the case now. We just don’t know,” he said.
Sinwar was eliminated on Oct 16 (last week), and at the time of his elimination, Hamas still had 101 Israeli hostages in captivity. Of these, at least 60 are believed to be still alive.
As with any group, the killing of Sinwar increases complexity by handing over the duties of the Hamas fighters to his brother Muhammad, as the report would have it.
That could be, as the hostage negotiator puts it, a “moment of opportunity” for Israel.
The nation, without Sinwar’s leadership “ought to be making a very clear call that anybody holding a hostage who releases them would be granted free passage for himself and his family out of Gaza to another country, as well as a lot of money.”
