When three Israeli hostages had been launched from Gaza on Sunday, Meytal Ofer, an Israeli kindergarten instructor, felt two competing feelings.
Firstly, Ms. Ofer felt pleasure — three of her compatriots, all ladies, had been being launched after greater than 470 days of captivity.
But someplace behind her thoughts was additionally a way of damage. To free the ladies, in addition to thirty different hostages anticipated to be launched within the coming six weeks, Israel has promised to launch roughly 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, a few of whom are serving lengthy jail phrases for killing Israelis.
A kind of prisoners murdered Ms. Ofer’s father in an ax assault 11 years in the past.
“I’m overjoyed they’re again,” Ms. Ofer, 48, mentioned of the hostages. However, she added, “There are painful emotions figuring out that the one who killed my Dad goes to be free.”
For each Israelis and Palestinians, the sealing of a cease-fire has spurred pleasure and celebration nevertheless it has additionally come at a worth for each peoples.
The association leaves Israel in charge of strategic components of Gaza, stopping many Palestinians from returning to their usually ruined houses, no less than for now. It has additionally pressured painful concessions from Israel — together with the discharge of convicted terrorists and the likelihood that Hamas, the instigator of the raid that began the struggle, might now stay in energy.
Regardless of a 15-month counterattack that has decimated Gaza and killed tens of hundreds of Palestinians, many Israelis now worry that the nation has failed in its wartime aims.
After utilizing Gaza as a springboard to launch the deadliest assault on Jews for the reason that Holocaust, Hamas nonetheless controls many of the territory, permitting its surviving members to parade jubilantly by a number of Gaza cities after the truce started. For Israelis who nonetheless search the group’s full defeat, these scenes had been a gut-punch.
Others might abdomen Hamas’s survival if it led to the discharge of all of the hostages nonetheless held by the group in Gaza. However the compromise reached by Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, solely ensures the discharge of a 3rd of them. Even these can be freed at a excessive worth — in change for prisoners convicted of among the most infamous terrorist assaults in Israeli historical past, along with scores of ladies and minors held with out cost.
“There’s an excessive model of ambivalence — we really feel two opposite feelings, powerfully and concurrently, a mix of maximum pleasure and excessive worry,” mentioned Micah Goodman, an Israeli thinker.
That worry takes two varieties, relying on one’s political outlook, Mr. Goodman added. Many on the Israeli left worry that the truce will collapse earlier than each hostage is freed. And lots of right-wing Israelis fear that the truce will turn out to be everlasting, stopping Hamas’s full defeat.
“There isn’t an Israeli I do know who wasn’t extraordinarily taken by the pictures of our sisters coming residence,” mentioned Mr. Goodman, the writer of a number of books on Israeli identification. “However the Israeli left fears that we would lose the chance to carry the remainder of the hostages residence,” he added. “And the Israeli proper fears that, if the struggle ends with Hamas nonetheless standing, we could have misplaced the struggle.”
The predicament of Yitzhak Horn embodied the battle that many really feel on the Israeli left. Mr. Horn’s sons, Eitan and Yair, had been each kidnapped throughout Hamas’s assault on Oct. 7, 2023 — however solely Yair is listed for launch throughout the first six weeks of the cease-fire. Eitan could by no means be freed if the Israeli authorities, underneath strain from its right-wing base, renews its efforts to defeat Hamas as soon as these six weeks elapse. For now, Mr. Horn is not sure whether or not to have fun or grieve.
“They’ve positioned me earlier than a modern-day Solomon’s dilemma,” Yitzhak Horn mentioned in a radio interview on Monday, referring to the biblical story of a mom pressured to decide on between killing her little one and giving it away.
“We’re all happy with what occurred yesterday, and we hope that issues will proceed that approach,” he mentioned. “However, I’m indignant, disillusioned and in addition afraid as a result of I don’t know what will occur — when Eitan goes to return.”
This frustration inside the hostage motion is compounded by the sense that the federal government might have carried out extra to undermine Hamas whereas the struggle was nonetheless raging. Arguing that Hamas might solely get replaced after the struggle ended, the federal government repeatedly refused to hunt an influence transition in Gaza that may have allowed extra reasonable Palestinian actors to run the territory in Hamas’s place.
Over the past 15 months, Israeli troops have at one level or one other managed most cities in Gaza, forcing Hamas to flee to different areas. However in every case, the navy left with out trying the troublesome job of handing over energy to Hamas’s rivals.
“Hamas not solely survived militarily — its regime has additionally remained intact,” Avi Issacharoff, an Israeli commentator, wrote in a column on Monday for the centrist newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth.
“A lot of that’s solely because of the Israeli authorities,” Mr. Issacharoff continued. “For months, Netanyahu and his ministers staunchly refused to carry any in-depth dialogue about making a governmental various to Hamas.”
Regardless of variations about wartime technique, Israelis of all backgrounds shared an ambivalence in regards to the resolution to swap Israeli hostages for Palestinian detainees.
Yair Cherki, an Israeli journalist, described the complexity of cheering for the discharge of the hostages — one in all whom, Romi Gonen, is a household good friend — whereas discovering that his brother’s killer can be launched as a part of the identical deal.
“It’s lower than 10 years for the reason that homicide, lower than a decade and he’ll be out? It’s unbearable,” Mr. Cherki mentioned in a spherical desk dialogue broadcast on tv.
However, he concluded, “Romi is alive and that’s the primary and easy factor. My view has not modified: Romi needs to be right here.”
Myra Noveck and Gabby Sobelman contributed reporting.
