Israel’s Mixed Mood Over Cease-Fire

When three Israeli hostages were released from Gaza on Sunday, Meytal Ofer, an Israeli kindergarten teacher, felt two competing emotions.

First and foremost, Ms. Ofer felt joy — three of her compatriots, all women, were being released after more than 470 days of captivity.

Yet somewhere in the back of her mind was also a sense of hurt. To free the women, as well as thirty other hostages expected to be released in the coming six weeks, Israel has promised to release roughly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, some of whom are serving long jail terms for killing Israelis.

One of those prisoners murdered Ms. Ofer’s father in an ax attack 11 years ago.

“I’m overjoyed they’re back,” Ms. Ofer, 48, said of the hostages. But, she added, “There are painful feelings knowing that the person who killed my Dad is going to be free.”

For both Israelis and Palestinians, the sealing of a cease-fire has spurred joy and celebration but it has also come at a price for both peoples.

The arrangement leaves Israel in control of strategic parts of Gaza, preventing many Palestinians from returning to their often ruined homes, at least for now. It has also forced painful concessions from Israel — including the release of convicted terrorists and the possibility that Hamas, the instigator of the raid that started the war, could now remain in power.

Despite a 15-month counterattack that has decimated Gaza and killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, many Israelis now fear that the country has failed in its wartime objectives.

After using Gaza as a springboard to launch the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, Hamas still controls most of the territory, allowing its surviving members to parade jubilantly through several Gaza cities after the truce began. For Israelis who still seek the group’s complete defeat, these scenes were a gut-punch.

Others could stomach Hamas’s survival if it led to the release of all the hostages still held by the group in Gaza. But the compromise reached by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, only guarantees the release of a third of them. Even those will be freed at a high price — in exchange for prisoners convicted of some of the most notorious terrorist attacks in Israeli history, in addition to scores of women and minors held without charge.

“There is an extreme version of ambivalence — we feel two contrary emotions, powerfully and simultaneously, a combination of extreme joy and extreme fear,” said Micah Goodman, an Israeli philosopher.

That fear takes two forms, depending on one’s political outlook, Mr. Goodman added. Many on the Israeli left fear that the truce will collapse before every hostage is freed. And many right-wing Israelis worry that the truce will become permanent, preventing Hamas’s complete defeat.

“There isn’t an Israeli I know who wasn’t extremely taken by the images of our sisters coming home,” said Mr. Goodman, the author of several books on Israeli identity. “But the Israeli left fears that we might lose the opportunity to bring the rest of the hostages home,” he added. “And the Israeli right fears that, if the war ends with Hamas still standing, we may have lost the war.”

The predicament of Yitzhak Horn embodied the conflict that many feel on the Israeli left. Mr. Horn’s sons, Eitan and Yair, were both kidnapped during Hamas’s assault on Oct. 7, 2023 — but only Yair is listed for release during the first six weeks of the cease-fire. Eitan may never be freed if the Israeli government, under pressure from its right-wing base, renews its efforts to defeat Hamas once those six weeks elapse. For now, Mr. Horn is unsure whether to celebrate or grieve.

“They’ve placed me before a modern-day Solomon’s dilemma,” Yitzhak Horn said in a radio interview on Monday, referring to the biblical story of a mother forced to choose between killing her child and giving it away.

“We’re all pleased with what happened yesterday, and we hope that things will continue that way,” he said. “On the other hand, I’m angry, disappointed and also afraid because I don’t know what is going to happen — when Eitan is going to return.”

This frustration within the hostage movement is compounded by the sense that the government could have done more to undermine Hamas while the war was still raging. Arguing that Hamas could only be replaced after the war ended, the government repeatedly refused to seek a power transition in Gaza that would have allowed more moderate Palestinian actors to run the territory in Hamas’s place.

Over the last 15 months, Israeli troops have at one point or another controlled most towns in Gaza, forcing Hamas to flee to other areas. But in each case, the military left without attempting the difficult task of handing over power to Hamas’s rivals.

“Hamas not only survived militarily — its regime has also remained intact,” Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli commentator, wrote in a column on Monday for the centrist newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth.

“Much of that is entirely thanks to the Israeli government,” Mr. Issacharoff continued. “For months, Netanyahu and his ministers staunchly refused to hold any in-depth discussion about creating a governmental alternative to Hamas.”

Despite differences about wartime strategy, Israelis of all backgrounds shared an ambivalence about the decision to swap Israeli hostages for Palestinian detainees.

Yair Cherki, an Israeli journalist, described the complexity of cheering for the release of the hostages — one of whom, Romi Gonen, is a family friend — while discovering that his brother’s killer would be released as part of the same deal.

“It’s less than 10 years since the murder, less than a decade and he’ll be out? It’s insufferable,” Mr. Cherki said in a round table discussion broadcast on television.

But, he concluded, “Romi is alive and that is the basic and simple thing. My view has not changed: Romi has to be here.”

Myra Noveck and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.