Yesterday, an Israeli drone killed a senior Hamas operative near the Lebanese city of Tyre. The IDF attempted an even more consequential targeted killing on Sunday, with an aerial strike on an underground complex in the central Gazan city of Nuseirat. The target was Marwan Issa, Hamas’s number-three within the Gaza Strip, after the leader Yahya Sinwar and the military chief Mohammed Deif. Both Israeli and Hamas officials say they are still investigating whether Issa survived. Yoav Limor explains why it matters:

Issa is the brilliant strategic brain among this threesome; he is also the individual who serves as the liaison between Deif and Sinwar—and there are those who even claim that he is the balancing factor who often “irons out the creases” and calms things down in the complex relationship between these two top men.

The main value of such targeting operations lies in their symbolic nature and their psychological effect. They make it poignantly clear to the enemy that Israel will pursue them wherever and whenever, regardless of location or time, until it succeeds in catching up with them and killing them. This turns them from the hunters into the hunted, forcing them into investing the majority of their time in hiding, and consequently limits their ability to engage in any ongoing communications with their own men and with the broader Palestinian public.

As long as the senior Hamas leaders are alive, there is serious concern that they will attempt to return to power there. Perhaps even more importantly, as long as they are alive, the Gazan public will seriously hesitate to choose any other path for fear of retribution in the future. Having said that, the hope that successful elimination of the Hamas leadership will also do away with the organization as a whole is entirely fanciful.

Robert Satloff has some harsh words for the U.S. government in this regard, words I take especially seriously because Satloff is someone inclined to political moderation. Why, he asks, have American diplomats failed to achieve anything in their endless rounds of talks in Doha and Cairo? Because

there is simply not enough pressure on Hamas to change course, accept a deal, and release the remaining October 7 hostages, stuck in nightmarish captivity. . . . In this environment, why should Hamas change course?

Publicly, the U.S. should bite the bullet and urge Israel to complete the main battle operations in Gaza—i.e., the Rafah operation—as swiftly and efficiently as possible. We should be assertively assisting with the humanitarian side of this.

Satloff had more to say about the hostages, especially the five American ones, in a speech he gave recently:

I am ashamed—ashamed of how we have allowed the story of the hostages to get lost in the noise of the war that followed their capture; ashamed of how we have permitted their release to be a bargaining chip in some larger political negotiation; ashamed of how we have failed to give them the respect and dignity and our wholehearted demand for Red Cross access and care and medicine that is our normal, usual demand for hostages.

If they were taken by Boko Haram, everyone would know their name. If they were taken by the Taliban, everyone would tie a yellow ribbon around a tree for them. If they were taken by Islamic State, kids would learn about them in school.

It is repugnant to see their freedom as just one item on the bargaining table with Hamas, as though they were chattel. These are Americans—and they deserve to be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.