Weekly Commentary: After McGurk Remarks Hostage Families Know Outcome Out Of
Their Hands
Dr. Aaron Lerner 9 October 2026
For video
https://youtu.be/R-65_x-EDnE?

Imagine your loved one is a Hamas hostage.
And various officials and ex-officials are telling you that the only thing
preventing their release is Binyamin Netanyahu.

So every day they remain hostages it is because you have failed to force
Netanyahu to change his mind.

And if they should die in captivity, it is because you failed, despite all
your efforts to force Netanyahu to free them in time.

The anguish.

And for those whose loved ones did not make it out - an ongoing sense of
guilt and frustration to live with for the rest of their lives.

Fortunately, "Inside the Hostage Negotiations - with Brett McGurk," Call Me
Back with Dan Senor, 4 October 2026, puts an end to all of this.

Because McGurk, President Biden's White House coordinator for the Middle
East, who was intimately involved in the negotiations from the first days
after the October 7 massacre through the January 2025 agreement makes it
clear that it was Hamas that was responsible - not Netanyahu.

And he is certainly no Netanyahu loyalist. He served an administration that
repeatedly clashed with Israel, at times even threatening to restrict arms
supplies.

Asked about reports that Hamas signaled shortly after the massacre that it
was ready to release all the hostages, McGurk dismissed the notion as
"complete bullshit."

McGurk said Hamas, and Yahya Sinwar in particular, believed the war would
end with Hamas still holding a number of hostages for years.

He said he had no doubt about that assessment.

McGurk also recounted that Netanyahu rejected an initial proposal
guaranteeing the release of 20 hostages. When McGurk suggested that the
negotiators might secure 30, Netanyahu insisted on demanding 50.

McGurk recalled Netanyahu telling him, "Brett, I need this deal. Help me get
it."

They ultimately secured the guarantee of 50.

That detail is worth remembering whenever someone suggests that Netanyahu
was simply uninterested in securing hostage releases.

McGurk recalled that Netanyahu accepted the detailed ceasefire proposal
presented by Biden at the end of May 2024, while Hamas failed to provide a
substantive response for almost five weeks.

The same fundamental problem became unmistakable at the end of August 2024.

The bodies of six murdered hostages were recovered from a tunnel in Rafah.
Hersh Goldberg-Polin was among them.

McGurk described bringing the list of their names into a White House meeting
and flinging it onto the table.

His conclusion was that there would be no hostage deal until Sinwar was
dead.

He later told freed hostages, including Keith Siegel, that he believed Hamas
had intended to hold captives for many years.

The January 2025 agreement, which brought additional living hostages home,
followed a fundamental change in the strategic situation.

Sinwar was dead. Hezbollah had suffered devastating military blows. Hamas's
regional position had deteriorated.

And the outgoing Biden team and Trump's envoy, Steve Witkoff, presented a
united front, with Trump warning of "hell to pay" if the hostages were not
released before his inauguration.

McGurk credited that cooperation as essential to securing the agreement.

He also offered a particularly important observation about public American
pressure on Israel.

Discussing the March 2024 United Nations Security Council resolution calling
for a Ramadan ceasefire, McGurk said it "played back extremely negatively in
the hostage talks."

He also criticized the public confrontation over Rafah.

His concern was that Sinwar, following the media from Rafah, could interpret
the growing rift between Washington and Jerusalem as a reason to hold out
rather than compromise.

In other words, public pressure on Israel could actually strengthen Hamas's
negotiating position.

That is an observation worth considering in the context of the campaign to
pressure Netanyahu into making additional concessions.

For three years, the hostage families were exposed to the argument that the
fate of their loved ones depended on persuading Netanyahu to change his
approach.

McGurk's testimony provides powerful grounds to question that proposition.

The hostage families now have an answer to the question which haunts them:
Could we have brought them home if only we had succeeded in changing
Netanyahu's approach?

McGurk's account gives them powerful reasons to believe that the answer is
no.
________________________________________
IMRA - Independent Media Review and Analysis

Since 1992 providing news and analysis on the Middle East with a focus on
Arab-Israeli relations

Website: www.imra.org.il