Veteran political commentator Amit Segal addressed the agreement to return the hostages and said that the war aims set by the government at its outset are being realized almost entirely.
According to him, "The conditions set on October 9 two years ago are the conditions being realized almost exactly in this agreement. Therefore, if this specific agreement had been presented at any point in the past 734 days, it would have passed by a large majority, regardless of the government's composition. But fate willed it, the U.S. president willed it, and the Hamas killers willed it, and it came into our hands only now."
Segal added that there are three central goals of the war: decisively defeating Hamas as a military force, returning the hostages, and dismantling Hamas's rule in Gaza. He said the first two goals have been achieved to a large extent, and now the question remains of disarmament and dismantling Hamas's rule.
"The first goal is to decisively defeat Hamas as a military force; that was achieved many months ago, when Hamas's army ceased to exist as an organized framework and became a guerrilla organization. Then the return of the hostages — that is happening now — and the third, which is the big test, is the dismantling of Hamas as the governing authority in Gaza," he said.
"Hamas no longer controls 53 percent of Gaza - that's official. It will never return to rule those 53 percent. Because if it does not disarm, Israel will not withdraw," Segal said, noting that "now the question is about the other 47 percent, and whether Hamas can remain there?"
Segal estimates that "it will no longer be able to strengthen itself. Israel will not again open the Philadelphi corridor; the folly in which we allowed one of the worst of our enemies to arm themselves while we turned a blind eye is not going to happen anymore."
He also addressed the diplomatic initiative concerning withdrawal and disarmament, and said, "The big question is whether Trump's very ambitious equation — withdrawal in exchange for disarmament and dismantling — will take place? Personally, I think there is no chance, and the whole construct is so complex that it will not happen. But if it does happen, we win because Hamas will not exist, and if it does not, the Israel Defense Forces will remain in 53% of the territory."
He said that after two years of fighting and a heavy human toll, the public in Israel will not allow a situation in which Hamas re-arms. "It seems to me that as a state we went through two years and almost two thousand dead so that no one in the Israeli public will again, as Churchill wrote, allow the wicked to renew their armament; it simply will not happen."