Israel can’t afford to say no. The optics of refusing to repatriate 50 hostages is worse than being blamed for killing innocent women and children. Take what you can get and when hamas falters you hammer them hard. I would have made sure all tunnels found near the gaza river on the south end of the city was boobie trapped in case hamas had plans of moving arms into the war zone.How do you negotiate something like this with terrorists as radical as they're made out to be? Why wouldn't you just level them, and consider the lives lost a tall payment for what's necessary to secure Israel's continued existence?
Something tells me things either aren't the way they're presented, or Israel has a dangerous obsession with optics.
Or there's some other theories I have, but people around here would be very angry to hear them.
Such as, Hamas being permitted to continue existing as a boogieman to justify various actions and funding, and needing to be reigned in from time to time to prevent them from becoming an existential threat.