Rami Igra, former head of the Prisoners and Missing Persons Department in the Mossad, recently addressed the current dead end in hostage negotiations, saying that the person responsible for delaying the deal is Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is right.
In an interview for Galei Yisrael radio, he said: "Although it tortures me, I think Netanyahu is right, he's not the problem with the hostage deal. The problem is Sinwar. He doesn't want a hostage deal, they are a weapon in his hands against Israel. It leads to division and this is his main strategic card."
He also said that "Even in the Shalit Deal, the army very much wanted to release Shalit and Olmert didn't agree. Netanyahu agreed to free Shalit because of the cottage cheese protest. There is a very large public in the State of Israel that thinks more from the heart and less from the head."