General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Poll: Do you believe Israel is committing genocide against the population of Gaza? [View all]Jedi Guy
(3,269 posts)Following the analogy for the sake of argument, though, the two responses law enforcement would normally use would be to attempt to negotiate the release of the hostages. If that failed, SWAT might then breach and attempt to take the hostage takers down.
I think it's pretty clear that negotiations (which have been ongoing behind the scenes for international hostages) are likely not going to be fruitful in the case of Israeli hostages, though some few have been released. Furthermore, negotiating with terrorists and giving them things in exchange for the release of hostages only encourages them to take more hostages.
So if negotiations are unlikely to succeed or have failed, that leaves us with a SWAT incursion, or in this case Mossad. SWAT doesn't have to fight their way through potentially miles of hostile urban setting to reach the bank, though. Mossad would have to do exactly that, and that action would more than likely result in civilian deaths, as well as put the Mossad team at huge risk of being KIA and failing to rescue the hostages, anyway.
The takeaway here is that Hamas has tried to put Israel into an impossible choice: either strike the military target and kill the civilians Hamas is using as shields, or refuse to strike the target and allow Hamas to continue launching rockets from that site or using it as a command and control facility.
Israel is choosing the former under the rationale that the destruction of Hamas is of supreme importance to Israeli security. If the IDF could strike and destroy a rocket launch site but does not for fear of hurting civilians, that rocket launch site can now proceed to kill Israeli civilians. IDF's duty is clearly to their own civilians first.