How Hamas manipulated Israel on captives

Details suggest Hamas has outsmart Israeli intelligence and succeeded in misinforming their ground invasion and captive search.

During Isr land incursion into Gaza, Hamas has announced the death of several Israelis kept there. At the time, it claimed these people died due to Isr bombardment. Following the release of some captives, it became clear that at least many did not actually die. So why did Hamas lie?

Hamas assessed the Israeli army would follow Hannibal Protocol once it realised where the hostages were kept. The Protocol practically means killing captives and captors to prevent putting Israel into prisoners swap situations. This is because such situations add exceptional pressure on political leaders to release the captives which sometimes undermine the state objectives and interests. By giving false information about the fate of some of the captives, Hamas sent the wrong message to Isr. It misguided Isr about the location of the captives. This meant Isr was bombing the wrong places. Hamas would say captive A died at a certain time during a specific day leading Isr to retarget false locations bombed on the day. This also means that ground troops movement has been potentially partly informed by the misinformation.

Hamas also misinformed Isr that their bombing was achieving its objectives suggesting resources, time and manpower have been wasted. It is important to highlight the significance of time. Hamas’ war is an attrition war. The longer it can drag Isr into a meaningless fight where no objectives are achieved, the greater its scores. The swap deal suggests Hamas exhausted Isr and scored its aim. Hamas also claimed the captives are kept in flats, but that may have also been a lie to undermine military and intelligence services efforts. Hamas’ interest in the civilian captives is now clearer. It was sought to pressure for humanitarian relief following its 7^th Oct attack and the ensued Isr land invasion.

Hamas captives though were mostly army men from all sort of ranks. Some of these names are known and some are not. Hamas still has not released any videos for the militant captives. According to repeated statements by Hamas officials, there is no interest in negotiating the release of militant captives at this point and only after the withdrawal of troops there will be any negotiations.

Hamas has interrogated all militant captives and took many advanced intelligence from them. They were shared with other countries as well according to estimates. The films of the interrogations remain secretive, but Hamas will almost certainly reveal some of the information when the time is right. They will also likely use it as leverage in negotiations to score points. Potentially, these can be used to prevent Israel from re-capturing released prisoners.

At this point, Isr has no real working theory about where the rest of the captives are. After insisting they were in hospitals, Isr now knows they were not. It is true some captives were driven from the borders to hospitals for treatment, but they were not kept there and it is unclear even after destroying all Gaza hospitals where are they.