Man who helped negotiate Israeli hostage's 2011 release says it's more complicated now
Civilian hostages, Gaza bombardment make this 'an extraordinarily different situation,' says Gershon Baskin
Gershon Baskin has been involved in hostage negotiations between Israel and Hamas before. But this time around, he says things are a lot messier.
Baskin is the Middle East director of the International Communities Organization, a human rights advocacy group. He was one of the people who worked to secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011 in exchange for the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.
Now Baskin is worried about the fate of the more than 200 people believed to have been abducted by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Israeli officials say more than 1,400 people, including some Canadians, have been killed in Israel in the last two weeks — mostly civilians slain during the initial Hamas attack. Gaza's health ministry says 5,000 people have been killed in the retaliatory attacks on Gaza, including 2,000 children.
Meanwhile, the hostages' lives hang in the balance. So far, Hamas has released four people — an American mother and daughter on Friday, and two elderly Israeli women on Monday.
But Baskin says the sheer number of hostages, paired with chaos of the siege and bombardment of Gaza, makes it hard to predict what will happen next. Here is part of his conversation with As It Happens host Nil Köksal.
What are the emotions you've been feeling over the last two weeks?
I have personal friends who have been killed or abducted to Gaza. One of my good friends in Jerusalem has 10 family members who have been abducted to Gaza, and two killed.
This is something that touches all of us ... and it's not only the horrors of the attack that affects us, but also the loss of confidence, of all of us, in the ability of Israel to protect itself, to defend us.
It's terrifying and it's very scary. And it's very frustrating because negotiations under these circumstances are very difficult. They're not direct. They're convoluted [and] complicated. And you don't even know, when you're talking to the other side … that there's a decision maker there who can actually make a decision and deliver.
You were involved in negotiating the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, back in 2011. What is different this time around?
Gilad Shalit was one soldier who was ... wounded and abducted in a commando raid in an army base across the Gaza border, and they held him … in secret locations for five years and four months without Israel ever discovering where he was.
He was a very valuable asset to them, because they knew they would get a large amount of prisoners in exchange for his life. So they kept him alive. They kept him well. He was cared for. He was never physically tortured.
Here, we're dealing with an extraordinarily different situation. Two-hundred and twenty-two is the number of hostages who are listed by the Israelis right now. They include infants and small children and women and men and elderly people and sick people. And they even took workers from Thailand and Nepal and other countries who are not part of this conflict at all.
We're in the midst of a war with an enormous bombing campaign going on in Gaza, destroying much of the Gaza Strip. More than a million Gazans are homeless already. So there's a horrific humanitarian crisis in Gaza as well, with so many innocent people being killed.
There's no way that Hamas can keep this secret location of more than 200 people. The logistics of keeping them spread out around the Gaza Strip must be a nightmare for them with the war going on. Just providing them with food and with their needs — do they have baby formula? Do they have diapers? Do they have medicine for the sick people?
What are you hearing, if anything, from your contacts [inside Hamas]?
What I can say is [what] Hamas has published in broad daylight ... and they are saying that they are prepared to release all the Israeli civilian hostages in exchange for a ceasefire.
My understanding is that it's a bit more complex than that. If it was as simple as that, I do think we would have seen it happening.
They did release these two women the other night.
I wondered what you think was said and done, and why those were the two first to be released?
My impression is that because it was direct involvement of [U.S.] President [Joe] Biden in their release. President Biden spoke to the family.
They were already made public, and they were the icon of the American hostages who were held.
And we have to understand this is part of Hamas's psychological warfare. Releasing these two was a sign that they're human, that there's going to be more releases, to put pressure on Israel from within [and] from the Israeli public.
It's very clear that the overwhelming majority of the hostages' families want this to be the No. 1 priority. It's not necessarily the No. 1 priority of Israel. There are other priorities, like dismantling Hamas's ability to ever attack Israel again and threaten Israel.
The 2011 deal … involved the release of some of the people responsible for killing your wife's cousin. When you look back on that, did you have any regrets?
The hope … was that once there was no longer an Israeli soldier being held in Gaza, there would no longer be excuses for the closure, the siege, the blockade on Gaza, and that Gaza could move in a different direction. That didn't happen.
The policies of [Israeli] Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu [have been] very clear. I wrote about this many, many times, that his strategy was to keep a weakened Hamas in power in Gaza and a delegitimized Palestinian Authority in [the West Bank], so that no one can say to him, "You should negotiate with the Palestinians," because his response was: "Who? We have no partner."
His strategy worked for a long time because it removed the Palestinian issue from the Israeli political agenda.
The bottom line is that you cannot occupy another people on their land for 56 years and expect to have peace. Nor can you lock more than two million people in a blockade, in a siege, in an open-air prison for 18 years, and expect to have quiet.
Sooner or later the Israeli public has to wake to that reality as well, that there are two people[s] living on the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and we have to look at each other in the eyes and say: "Everyone here has the same right to the same rights."
You're also a friend of Vivian Silver, the Canadian peace activist. Her family believes she is among the hostages as well. Have you had any word about her?
None whatsoever. And I passed her name on to contacts in Gaza to ask about her, but Hamas does not give out information on hostages.
Vivian is a good friend. I've known her for more than 30 years. We've worked together. We've been on marches together and peace activities together and many, many conferences together for a very long time, and she's an extraordinary woman.
God help us all, she better come back alive.
With files from The Associated Press. Interview produced by Kate Swoger. Q&A edited for length and clarity
