The news broke late yesterday that Israel and Hamas had brokered a ceasefire deal through the Qatari government, with the release of hostages being the key part of the deal.

The official statement from Prime Minister Netanyahu lays out some of the terms of the deal.

Tonight, the Government has approved the outline of the first stage of achieving this goal, according to which at least 50 hostages – women and children – will be released over four days, during which a pause in the fighting will be held.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 22, 2023

The Government of Israel, the IDF and the security services will continue the war in order to return home all of the hostages, complete the elimination of Hamas and ensure that there will be no new threat to the State of Israel from Gaza.

— Prime Minister of Israel (@IsraeliPM) November 22, 2023

What this statement does NOT say about the ceasefire is telling. The devil is truly in the details here, and Israel is being forced to choke down a crap sandwich in order to get their hostages back.

Under the deal, Israel’s military has agreed to temporarily stop its pursuit of Hamas — including its ground invasion of Gaza and its airstrikes — for humanitarian purposes. Also, Hamas has agreed to release dozens of hostages in tandem with Israel agreeing to release Palestinian prisoners on a 3-to-1 ratio. Fox News’ Trey Yingst reported Hamas leaders would release one hostage for every three Palestinians that Israel releases from its prisons.

Hamas, which governs Gaza, took about 240 hostages from Israel during its terror attack on Oct. 7, when it invaded Israel and killed approximately 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The terror group said at the time that it took enough hostages, which included Israelis, Americans and other foreign nationals, to free all Palestinians in Israel.

Yingst reported live from Israel that the hostages are expected to only be women and children, while it is not immediately clear which prisoners would be released. The initial hostages released will likely not include the entirety of women and children being held hostage.

Even with a delicate deal finalized, the actual release of the hostages is expected to take at least 24 hours. Yingst reported Israel and Hamas could likely release only a few hostages at a time to see if the peace holds.

“You’ll see the first hostages come out over the course of Thursday,” a senior administration official said, noting that the release could occur at multiple locations.

Remember, only a few hostages have been released up to this point. For the ceasefire to hold, though, more hostages actually have to BE released. And now Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad may have some problems. It has been reported that the hostages were scattered widely among not just Hamas and PIJ, but also Palestinian “civilians.” And now they can’t all be tracked down, because the Hamas leaders who are brokering the deal don’t actually have the hostages in their custody any longer. And there’s another complication – some of the hostages have died while being held captive. The IDF has recovered a couple of bodies, but PIJ is claiming that one of their hostages – whom they used in a video – has died.

(Hanna) Katzir, 77, was seen in videos circulated by Islamic Jihad earlier this month with a message saying the group would release Katzir and a 12-year-old boy on humanitarian and medical grounds once certain conditions were right.

Abu Hamza, a spokesman for the Al-Quds Bridges, in a statement announcing Katzir’s death on Tuesday, noted Islamic Jihad “previously expressed our readiness to release for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy’s procrastination led to the loss of her life.”

“In light of this announcement, we renew our affirmation of renouncing our responsibility towards our enemy prisoners in light of the barbaric and frenzied bombing of every inch of the Gaza Strip,” Hamza said.

We have reached the stage of the hostage deal news cycle where Hamas and Islamic Jihad start copping to killing hostages, whether by intent or neglect, to explain why some of them are not available to be released. https://t.co/foydzwOUhW

— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) November 21, 2023

Between death and the “lost” hostages, this might be a very short-lived ceasefire. Also, Hamas – which miraculously manages to find fuel every time it wants to fire off rockets – is continuing to attack Israel, even through yesterday. Who is to say some trigger-happy Hamas terrorist with a rocket in his backyard isn’t just going to fire one off for funsies?

So why is Israel agreeing to this? Because they want the hostages back, and any deal that can bring some of them home, especially the children, has to be taken seriously. If the Israeli government did not agree to this, the blowback would have been immense.

Absolutely no Israeli prime minister could ever turn down a deal swapping 150 relatively low-value prisoners and a short ceasefire for 53 hostages, all of them women and children. Whether this becomes a bad deal depends entirely on how Israel and the US handle the next few days

— Armin Rosen (@ArminRosen) November 21, 2023

Now, there is a very real concern that even with “low value prisoners” being released (and they had all better be dropped off in Gaza, not just released into Israel or even the West Bank), there will be a repeat of the Gilad Shalit exchange. In that case, Shalit, a IDF soldier, was held prisoner for five years until an exchange was brokered for his release – but it meant over a thousand Palestinians were released. And you can bet your bottom dollar that some of those thousand were active aggressors on October 7th.

Make no mistake, this deal is a crap sandwich. But Israel will accept it because they want the hostages back. It isn’t enough, and once this “ceasefire” is over, the war will resume. What is happening now is an exchange – lives saved now, for lives sacrificed later. If that is the deal that Israel feels it has to make, then that’s the devil they will have to deal with when the time comes.

Featured image: flag of Israel by edu_castro27 via Pixabay, cropped and modified, Pixabay license