‘Hamas Wants to Kill These People’: Ex-Navy Hostage Negotiator Gives CNN a Dire Assessment For Hostages Held in Gaza
CNN’s Sara Sidner spoke with former Navy SEAL hostage coordinator Daniel O’Shea on Monday about the likely Israel ground assault on Gaza and what it will mean for the nearly 200 hostages being held by Hamas.
“Can you give us some sense of what you think about the military’s potential ground offensive in Gaza? We know right now that there is a huge number, hundreds of thousands of troops that are on that border. There are tanks on that border, and they say they are ready to go when they get the word,” began Sidner after discussing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
“Yeah, it’s going to be an urban assault. The likes that we’ve seen in the last 20 years, only in places like Fallujah, Fallujah one and Fallujah two, Ramadi, when they retook Ramadi after ISIS had taken it over. It is going to be a door-to-door battle,” O’Shea replied, adding:
And again, as you stated, Gaza is the most densely packed, one of the most densely populated regions in the world. And literally on every corner, there’s going to be challenges. So it’s going to be a very chaotic [assault], it’s going to be reminiscent of a World War II, what happened in Europe, in World War II.
Sidner expressed shock at the comparison to World War II, calling it a “very stark thing to say” and then asked about the likelihood Israel can achieve its military goals in Gaza.
“We have heard over and over and over again from the Israeli military that their only goal is to rid Gaza of Hamas. That is their goal, to get rid of Hamas once and for all. But they’re saying they’re going to try also to protect civilian lives. A lot of this is intertwined in this very densely populated place. How do you go about carrying this out effectively?” Sidner asked.
“Well, there is no easy answer to this because the civilian population are intermixed amongst the fighters, the Hamas fighters. And they’ve done that intentionally. I mean, Hamas is trying to put stop gaps to let people from the north flee to the south because they want the civilian casualties,” O’Shea replied, adding:
That’s part of it. They lost the upper hand in the world’s eyes for the terror and destruction they brought to Israel last week. And that’s why they want to turn this around. And soon as the the body count, especially on the civilian side, no one cares when fighters die just being blunt. Soldiers sign up to serve. They die in combat. It is a tragedy.
But you sign up for that and the fighters feel the same way. But it’s when the civilians get wrapped into this, that’s when world opinion changes. And so that’s going to be the challenge for the Israeli forces going in and literally block the block. They’re going to be taking down buildings that will have not only fighters for, you know, Hamas fighters, but largely there will be civilians still in the mix.
“So there is no easy way to do this. And it is a — it is a nightmare of of just epic proportions. And then, you know, even considering, you know, the hostage operations as well, even more challenging in an environment like Gaza,” O’Shea concluded.
Sidner then asked O’Shea about the negotiations to release the 199 confirmed hostages in Gaza, whom she noted included many children, the elderly, and young women.
O’Shea replied by noting that it was the most difficult situation he had seen in his 20 years of experience. “And the big key thing for hostage rescue is a, quote, ‘stealthy insertion,’ because you have to assume that those hostages are surrounded by arm-toting gunmen.”
“Hamas wants to kill these people. I mean, they took those hostages to continue the terror mission. It is I don’t, the odds are not good for those hostages. But in the same scenario with ISIS in Syria and we did launch rescue missions. The best hostage rescue forces on planet Earth are certainly assembled in the region,” O’Shea concluded, arguing he does believe there will be attempts to rescue the hostages.
Watch above via CNN.
