This time, an Israeli captive is unlikely to prove a Hamas trump card

When Hamas on July 20 claimed to have captured an Israeli soldier in Gaza, the news was greeted by spontaneous celebrations in Ramallah. Amid the relentless bombing raids that had killed hundreds of Palestinians with no sign of abating, it seemed Hamas finally had a trump card. Surely, many Palestinians reasoned, the prospect of a soldier held captive by the Gaza paramilitaries would make Israel more amenable to negotiations. After all, the only major concession Hamas ever extracted from Israel was the release of 1,027 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for one such Israeli captive, Sgt. Gilad Shalit.

But any assumption that Friday’s capture of 2nd Lt. Hadar Goldin, an officer in the Givati infantry brigade, might produce a similar result would be a dangerous misreading of Israel’s current decision making.

The soldier reported missing on July 20 was already dead, the Israelis knew, and no one in Israel indicated interest in negotiating for his body. Now, official acknowledgement by the Israel Defense Force (IDF) means that either Hamas or one of the other Palestinian fighting organizations in Gaza may be holding a living Israeli soldier prisoner. If so, Goldin may not prove to be the trump card that Shalit had been for Hamas.

Israel’s soldiers are the “soft spot” targeted by Palestinian armed groups, aware that those serving in its conscript army are viewed as the representation of the children, siblings and peers of all Israelis. Soldiers embody the collective experience of all Israelis: Young men and women starting out in life, full of hopes and dreams, they wear the uniform once worn by most Israelis at the same point of their own lives. Israelis see themselves in the young conscripts who are enduring the same small joys and disappointments of the coming of age in the military that remains the common Israeli experience.

And where Israeli society is increasingly riven with social and ideological cleavages, the army is viewed as a great leveler and integrator — even if the reality is that social divisions persist even there, with an individual soldier’s social background often determining whether they find their way into an elite unit. Still, an Israeli who might not have encountered anyone from a posh suburb or a dingy development town in 20 years may remember one guy he got along with back in his army days.

It is the army’s centrality to the Israeli national experience that fuels the intensity and intimacy of feelings aroused by the fate of every soldier. When a soldier dies, it hurts Israelis immensely. But when he is captured alive, the impact has often been worse. There is no closure, no certainty, no rest — not for his family and not, thanks to relentless media coverage, for any Israelis.

Hezbollah, in particular, has focused on that particular nerve: On the two occasions the Lebanese Shia militia captured Israeli soldiers, it delayed to the bitter end announcing whether they were alive or dead — in the case of Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, whose capture sparked the Second Lebanon War in 2006, right up to the moment when their coffins were revealed to Israeli officials at an exchange ceremony in 2008. Another soldier captured in Lebanon in 1982, Air Force navigator Ron Arad, is still believed by many Israelis to be alive, possibly in a Tehran prison. When Gilad Shalit had appeared on the television screens on the day of his release in 2011, many Israelis saw the equivalent of a Biblical miracle — he had been to the other side, and was brought back to life.

If anything, however, the Shalit precedent diminishes Goldin’s value to his captors. Not only does Friday’s capture of the soldier risk immediate and immense escalation of Israel’s already (unprecedentedly) lethal campaign in Gaza, but the calculus of Israeli decision makers is now quite different to those that shaped the Shalit prisoner exchange.

Despite overwhelming support for the war in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s own political position has become increasingly precarious. The current war’s origins could arguably be traced to the collapse of the peace talks between Israel and the PLO in April. Although observers on all sides gave those talks precious little chance to begin with, their fate was sealed when Israel’s part in the trust-building steps — the staged release of prisoners — became a political football in Netanyahu’s own cabinet.

After several rounds of bargaining, Naftali Bennet’s Habayit Hayehudi party (with some support within Netanyahu’s own Likud faction) managed to shoot down the final prisoner release, leaving the talks dead in the water. Bennet then initiated legislation designed to bar the possibility of releasing future prisoners, in any circumstances.

The consensus among Israeli political analysts is that Netanyahu has become a lame-duck prime minister. This perception has grown after he tried but failed to prevent Washington’s rapprochement with Iran, and then lost a very personal domestic political fight to stop his fiercest rival in the Likud, Reuven Rivlin, being elected as Israel’s president in June.

Netanyahu will face a right-wing backlash when the Gaza war ends, especially if – as is likely – it concludes with a ceasefire that fails to disarm Hamas. That political context further militates against Netanyahu seeking Goldin’s freedom through concessions to his captors. And, absent a daring rescue operation, that could mean a protracted ordeal for the soldier’s family — and an escalation of the already epic ordeal being suffered by Gaza’s Palestinians.