Hostages' lives in Gaza are a bargaining chip

Trading is going on for the release of the 100 or so hostages still believed to be alive in Gaza. It seems appalling but it's the reality of trying to do business with a designated terrorist organisation. For some time Israel has stipulated that in return for a six-week ceasefire it wanted 40 hostages freed. Now, according to the latest reports, that figure has come down to 33, most of whom would be women, the sick and the elderly. "You get six weeks of no fighting and we get 33 hostages." It's an unpleasant business. And think of the poor hostages, knowing that instead of having a team of Israeli special forces suddenly arriving and freeing them all, they have to wait in turn while their government plays the numbers game with their kidnappers. If the 33 figure is accurate, then around 70 hostages, presumably mostly younger Israelis, men and women, boys and girls, will have to wait for the next round of trading whenever that might be. But if, in the meantime, the Israel Defence Forces launch their much-anticipated assault on the town of Rafah in the south of Gaza, then the 70 hostages might have to wait a long time before they are freed. Or, the worst scenario, they are never released. Israeli airstrikes are already going on in Rafah, so in some ways you could say that the invasion of the town which is hosting more than a million Palestinian refugees, ousted from their homes in the north and other parts of Gaza, has already begun. Of course it's possible the trading and the bargaining over the hostages may be fruitless. Hamas has yet to reveal whether it's happy to free 33, instead of 40. They are surely likely to hold on until Israel can be persuaded not to invade Rafah at all. There is potentially a total impasse here.