Israel-Hamas war: Hamas leader could be exchanged for hostages, Israeli official says

latest right now. Israel's Chief negotiator for hostages and missing persons gal. Hirsch has reportedly proposed offering Hamas leader. Yahya sinwar safe, passage out of Gaza in exchange for all. 101. Hostages that remain in captivity. now held for nearly a year. the information revealed in a Bloomberg interview with the disclaimer that it's not clear if Hamas has responded or would even consider it at all. this comes as ceasefire negotiations. resumed between Israel and Hamas, kind of going back and forth between Doha and Cairo. the war. As I mentioned, nearing the 1-year Mark a lot of developments to discuss here. So I want to bring in Enya cervine the senior director of the Israel program and the National security network at the foundation for defense of democracies. Thank you. so much for taking the time to be here with us today. Thanks so much for having me again, Josh. All right. Well, first off, I do want to ask you here about that. information coming in regarding the Negotiator is that something that, uh, Israel would really consider doing. and Hamas would? accept? Sure, if the girl hers have done a pretty good job of saying out of the Limelight as Israel's top negotiator for hostages. So I do think that it's significant that he's gone on the are a couple times recently once that Hebrew and now this Bluebird interview and let some details about the negotiations out. I think it's really significant because there's been a push a campaign to paint this as Netanyahu Israel's prime minister. as being the, the the roadblock to getting some kind of deal. and I think it's significant that, finally, um, gal, hers, and others are breaking their silence and showing the public just how far Israel is willing to go And what big concessions that it has put on the table in order to try to get these hostages back. So this is just 1 of them, you know, Israel has done an incredible job. militarily against Hamas. that is destroyed the backbone of this military. is killed over 17. Operatives according to the idea. So the Hamas Remains a shell of what it was. before, Of course, Israel Can't go after every terrorist, every gun, every tunnel that will never happen. but it is largely been destroyed at the military force and that was Israel's 1 of Israel's tacos of the war. The other was to make sure that Gaza couldn't be a platform. from which to attack Israel again. and I believe that that is largely been attained. So the last and for many many people in Israel, the most important thing Wargo that Israel has yet to achieve, is to bring the hostages called and I believe that their Israel's willing to make very painful concessions in order to get that And I did want to discuss all of this a little bit further. you kind of touched on this, But the Israel Defense Forces has initially set of Defense that the Khan Yunis X Commander there was actually begging. senoir and his brother for help as that Brigade was falling apart. And now we've learned over the past several days from the IDF that uh, the rafah B uh Brigade has now been destroyed. so to speak. So how significant is that overall When you look at the big picture, In the battle against Hamas. It's very significant. look, The rocket Brigade was the last in attack. standing. uh, major unit of Hamas. when Israel decided to go into Rafa a couple months ago. it made it clear that it had to go into destroy. this last sort of unit. this brigade, Italian, But there's another really important reason that Israel had to go into raqqa. And that was to close off. the sub smuggling routes through which Hamas was arming itself. Bringing um, M Munitions and people in and out of the Gaza Strip over the years. And so it was a critical Um it was a critical strategic. win for Israel to be able to go in. close in those smuggling routes. essentially. depriving Hamas of the oxygen. It needs to continue the war. and destroy that. Brigade. So but I don't want to lose sight of the big picture here, Josh. I mean the battle with Hamas It looks like it's that it's nearing an end. the IDF has achieved. Its military goals. But of course this war is a larger war between Israel and the Iranian axis and we've seen it attacked on 7, France. just in the past few days. Israel's had Terror attacks from Jordan. The West Bank it's had Rockets from Gaza had escalation of rockets from the north. So while the battle against Hamas may be over there is a long War ahead. and we're going to talk a little bit more about the situation over in the North in just a second. But I wanted to ask you about a report from Hebrew media. Now saying that some of Hamas warehouses are overflowing with that. humanitarian Aid that's been stolen. That was supposed to be going into the civilians there in Gaza but Hamas has taken so much of it that it's now. stacked up in those warehouses and there's no room for it. What do you make of that? Because it almost seems to provide more evidence of what the IDF has been saying. all along, which is that the aid is flowing in. however, it's not making it to the civilians. That's correct. Josh Israel has said since early on in the war that there is no limit to the aid, that will go into that. They will allow into Gaza and indeed they've opened up additional points so that the international Community can get a into the Enclave. but the issue as we've talked about before, has always been getting the 8 to the people who need it and Hamas has been hoarding. that Aid and selling it on the black market. and there was a report earlier in the week that estimates that Hamas has made 500 million dollars off of The black market in Aid. Now that's just an estimate in Israeli. Uh, media. but I don't, I don't think that it's unlikely. and here's why. Because Hamas is knows how to smuggle and it knows how to use the black market, all of these tunnels that came through who got from Egypt to Gaza that we talked about. just a second ago. They brought in Munitions, they brought in weapons and Rockets, and, and drones and other. military goods. But they also just brought in everyday things that Hamas then resold on the black market. and a big part of its income was that markup that it made in order to sell. everyday Goods think. Um, think you know, perfumes or food or other Goods that came in that were smuggled under the ground there from Egypt. So now that this Lifeline has been cut off along with Philadelphia by Corridor that humanitarian Aid that. however much they've managed to afford in their warehouses is their new Financial. lifeline and you we can thank, you know, we can thank our The international. Community us. tactile Tech tax dollars for now. Keeping that terrorist group. financed. and as I mentioned, we're going to talk a little bit more about the north because you were just there and we have some photos But before we do that, I do have 1 more question that comes to mind. We know that. uh the Israel Defense Forces saying that they stopped 2 Israeli civilians from crossing over, into Gaza from Israel. Is that something that can be done and just excuse my ignorance There because I'm not really sure. I haven't been to that location, but I wanted to get your take on that and whether it's actually possible to travel from Israel. into Gaza right now, which is, of course, an active war zone. so, it hasn't been easy. we'll put it that way to get from Israel. into Gaza from many many years. There's Israel's had a military blockade on Gaza since Gaza started attacking Israel with attacking and mortars and missiles. um, various soon after Israel disengage from that territory. So it's not a chorus border. However, instances before the war. when people have managed to get through to Gaza, in fact, 1 of The hostages, of the, you know, there's 103 left. 4 of them. predate, the war, and 1 of them was an Israeli Arab who essentially went into Gaza thinking that he could join a map. So there's a lot of different reasons for going into Gaza but since the War Began first to your question can they get in? the it looks like a couple of people have managed to broach the interior. uh boundary on the Israeli side. So Israel has its own little buffer zone on Israeli territory and it looks like some folks have managed to get past the first barrier but then have been stopped before they got into Gaza and that's what it looks like. happened with these 2. Um, just yesterday. and there are a couple reasons they could have been going. It's I don't like to speculate because you never know people do the strangest. Things. all the time. But um, a couple books have approached the Border throughout the war who have been advocating for. resettling Gaza. Again, this would just Be some sort of publicity stunt. families of hostages. also approached the Border. again just to gain publicity and um, visibility for their cause and then there's always the chance that it could have been. a must sympathizer but we just don't have information. Like I said, the only breach that in internal Israeli buffer zone and they weren't successful in going in. and I want to show those photos that we were talking about right here just moments ago. These of course sent To Us by you as you were there just explain to me what you saw while you were there because we know that the Hezbollah attacks on Israel in the north. I mean going on for a while and as a result we have seen fires that are essentially burning out of control and you see it in 1 of the photos and the video here. Yeah. So um, I took a road trip up North with a couple of journalists friends. on Thursday. and while we were there we met with the heads of security in um in in the sort of, in the Galilee region and of course, many of your viewers may know the Galilee region because it's, of course, where Jesus walked and where, a lot of, um, Jesus is Miracles, were performed. So the Galilee region is in the North of Israel. There's about 1.5 million, people. The Jews. Drews Arabs, and Christians, who all coexist. and other minorities. But largely, those are the large communities that all coexist in the Galilee. and, if you go into the northern part of the Galilee, where you click get close to the Lebanese border, there's this Zone. that's evacuated and I went with my colleagues and we drove up north to the evacuated Zone and visited the largest evacuated City up there. And this is where, um, some of the pictures of the damage are from. this is a city of 25,000 that's been evacuated for almost a year. and that picture there is of a kindergarten and you can see that there was an impact. from a rocket on the kindergarten. and the concrete wall behind it is sprayed with shrapnel and you can only imagine what would that would look like. if that kindergarten had been in session on that day Of course this is an evacuated town. Um it's receiving a lot of fire the the security head told me that that town alone that evacuated town of curios. in this finger of the Galilee in the very northern part of Israel. It's a lush Valley surrounded on 3 sides by Lebanese territory. period. since the war started as absorbed. 7 over 700 Direct. hits to infrastructure. so you can understand when you see these kind of images, why it was necessary to evacuate that town. However, the walking into it, it turned into a ghost town. There's no people there's no cars the traffic lights, kind of blink, intermittently it's spooky and it's definitely an unsustainable situation. for Israel's North about 60,000 people live in communities like kyria. Model that have been. um, completely uh, evacuated. But there's another a million people that live in the North who are all in range of these, hizballah rockets and who are all living on a knife's edge. You know, they send their kids to school. They here in an evacuation they're terrified that their children may have been involved. They don't want their kids to go home on the school bus and they're living with this kind of fear. for almost a year now. So that's the North and that's the view from the Galileo. but to share it with you, Josh. All right? And yeah, thank you so much. as always for taking the time to join us and, and break it all down and also share those photos of your trip there to the north Is there anything else that you want to add about any of this before I let you go. No. I mean you and I Joshua always watching mean, you and I Joshua you it's been a pretty busy week there. with a lot of activity from the IDF. Um, they just discovered another tunnel yesterday, Um, they just discovered another tunnel yesterday, this is clearly a goal of the terrorists in the West Bank is to have their own tunneling program like Hamas and hisbah. So uh, we're all watching it very closely and hoping that things start to calm down there. Although unfortunately trajectory seems to be going in the opposite direction. All right, and yeah, thanks again for for