Hamas Leader Wanted 10 Years of Captivity: Gal Hirsch Drops Bombshell Details

Gal Hirsch, who served as Israel's coordinator for prisoners and missing persons for over two years in the effort to secure the release of hostages taken by Hamas terrorists during the October 7, 2023, massacre, revealed disturbing new details about Yahya Sinwar's long-term strategy and the near-impossible conditions Israel faced in attempting rescues.

In an interview with journalist Amit Segal published in Yisrael Hayom, Hirsch confirmed that Sinwar intended to hold the hostages as bargaining chips for as long as a decade. Yes, ten years of negotiations, Hirsch said. He explained that the team categorized the hostages into several groups based on their situation: those feared missing and unlikely to be found, labeled Ron Arad cases, hostages held at known locations but with very slim chances of rescue, called Wachsmans, those believed deceased, termed Regevs and Goldwassers, and those who could potentially be returned through a deal, referred to as Shalits.

When Hirsch accepted what he described as the most difficult mission ever assigned in public service, the number of captives and missing persons was unprecedented and initially unknown. On the evening of October 8, I realized we were missing 3,200 people, he recalled. By the second week, that number dropped to 1,060. Later, it dropped to 400. He deliberately avoided releasing an exact hostage count until the end of November to prevent Hamas from exploiting ambiguity by claiming certain individuals were merely missing persons rather than captives.

Hirsch highlighted the vast gap between Israel's intelligence capabilities and the extreme difficulty of mounting successful rescue operations. There were cases where our unit was literally at the door, he said, but we knew we wouldn't have those crucial few seconds needed to reach the captives alive, so we pulled back. He noted the unprecedented military challenge: In modern history, there's never been a case of an army operating with six divisions while hundreds of hostages were being held in dozens of locations on the battlefield. When the ground war began on October 26, we worked out of an improvised office in a WeWork space, while families poured in crying, What are you doing to them? We insisted on maintaining both, hostage operations and the military operation, without giving up on either.

Hirsch recounted how Qatar emerged as the official mediator. I called the cellphone of a senior Qatari official who offered his country's mediation services. I asked, How do I know you can deliver? He said, Tell me what you need. I replied, Get the hostages out. He traveled south to Gaza to oversee the pilot release. The next day, Judith and Natalie Raanan were freed, followed later by Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper via Egypt. That's how Qatar became the mediator.

What killed me was the enormous gap between what I saw in the intelligence files and inside the negotiation rooms, Hirsch said. Behind closed doors, Hamas demanded Israel's total surrender while publicly portraying Israel as the side refusing peace. The peak came during Ramadan, Sinwar was planning Al-Aqsa Flood 2, yet we were accused of blocking a ceasefire during the fast and sabotaging a deal.

The hostage headquarters was officially shut down Thursday morning. Hirsch acknowledged the lasting personal impact of the mission. Through this work, we saw every video, every atrocity, and heard every testimony, he said. I've had people die in my arms, I've killed and nearly been killed, but I've never seen anything so catastrophic, so biblical in its horror.