Hatem Ali/AP
- Gershon Baskin helped secure the release of an Israeli soldier from Hamas in 2011.
- He says Hamas' hostage-taking campaign is "unprecedented," per The Wall Street Journal.
- "What do they even do with them now that they have them?" he asked.
A mediator who helped negotiate the 2011 exchange of an Israeli soldier said Hamas' hostage-taking in its recent terror attacks was "unprecedented" due to the sheer number of people involved, according to The Wall Street Journal.
"It's unprecedented, there's no doubt," Gershon Baskin, the Middle East director for International Communities Organization, a UK-based peace-building NGO, told the newspaper.
He added: "It's insane why they even took them, and what do they even do with them now that they have them?"
The Israel Defense Forces said on Monday that the families of 199 hostages had been told that their loved ones were being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, per The Times of Israel.
A State Department spokesperson said 13 Americans were among the missing, the Journal reported.
Baskin, an American-Israeli peace activist, helped secure the release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas in 2011. He's now speaking with the militant group again to try to negotiate the release of the current hostages, per multiple reports.
As part of negotiations, Baskin, alongside other mediators, is trying to get Hamas to free women, children, sick, and elderly in exchange for the release of a group of Palestinian women and minors from the West Bank detained in Israel, per the Journal.
As for the other hostages, including men, Baskin said they may escape, be rescued, or be killed during Israel's imminent ground war.
"We may find ourselves in a situation after this war with some people not recovered, not rescued, not found, and who will be categorized as missing probably forever; maybe they will be under rubble," he told the newspaper.
Baskin told the UK's Channel 4 that Hamas militants have so far refused to take part in talks but could agree to a "limited" deal involving the release of women, children, the sick, and the elderly.
Per Baskin's own assessment, the Israeli government and the majority of the Israeli people are willing to sacrifice hostages to "get the job done" and wipe out the Hamas militant group from Gaza.
"It's horrible to think about it, but they're willing to pay that extra price if the job gets done," he told Channel 4.
Following Hamas' surprise attacks on Israel on October 7, a spokesperson for the organization's armed wing, Abu Ubaida, declared that the group would execute a hostage every time Israel attacked a Gazan civilian home "without warning," per Reuters.
Israel's death toll has risen to more than 1,400, the IDF told CNN on Sunday, while the Palestinian death toll from Israel's retaliatory strikes on Gaza has risen to over 2,670, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry.