Getting the Hostages: It is Time to Get Creative

We need a Greater Sense of Urgency

I don’t remember who it was, but during the first months of the war, someone said that, regarding the hostages, Netanyahu, along with Defense Minister Galant needed to have a daily meeting with the head of the Mossad, head of the Shaback, Head of Military Intelligence and the IDF Chief of Staff where they had to provide progress on the location and plans to free the hostages.   For anyone with a key project in the business world that is what we like to call a “no brainer”.  There is a time dependent project that needs to get done and those responsible have to give daily updates – face to face, to their boss.

This wasn’t done of course and instead Netanyahu sent two people with vast experience in spying and catching terrorists but no experience in negotiations – to negotiate.   This was never a good idea and after 13 months of failure (with the exception of the first deal which was due to vast military operations and the need for Hamas to catch their breath and to regroup) Netanyahu is sending the same people.  The head of the Shaback has flown to Cairo to re-open negotiations with Hamas, where, post-Sinwar, there seems to be no incentive for the terrorist organization to compromise.  The hostages are all they have left, and it makes no sense for them to give them up.

However, as we stated in a previous post, going straight to the people who hold the hostages might work.    I am pretty confident it will work if combined with the “sticks” that are IDF firepower and Shaback pressure.

But there could be other ways to get them back.  A little inter-agency competition by forcing the heads of the security services to answer the question:  “What did you do in the past 24 hours to get the hostages back and what are your plans for the next 24 hours?” might unlock the creativity that has been missing for the past 13 months.

If we need to send people to Egypt or Qatar or Paris to negotiate, we should send actual negotiators and not spy chiefs.  Let the spy chiefs figure “out of the box” ways to get them.  A hostage “operation beeper” if you like.

The same old thing is not working and every governmental (and maybe non-governmental) entity in the country needs to be working on it.  As the “start-up nation” surely Israel can come up with more creative and successful solutions than sitting in a hotel room in Doha talking to people who are NOT holding the hostages.   There needs to be a greater sense of urgency to get them back. It is time to be creative.  If the current chiefs of the Shaback, Mossad and IDF can’t figure it out then fire those chiefs and bring in new ones who can.  And let’s add to the team – the private sector in Israel has solved problems no one thought were solvable.  In addition to the daily meeting of the security chiefs we need daily meetings with the creative types that turned Israel into the Start Up Nation.    

This failure to locate and free the hostages cannot go on.      

NOTE:  For those who wait impatiently for the next Angry Demagogue post – we will be travelling for a few weeks so we might not be writing.