Not sure who you were listening to, but I seem to remember from the beginning that one of Israel's stated goals was to remove Hamas from power. The hostages getting released was a condition for any pauses or ceasefires.
Their true goal is to erase Palestine period. Hamas could be removed tomorrow, hostages freed and that wouldn’t stop them. They would say the new regime is “backed by Hamas” or “contains remnants of Hamas” or is “influenced by Hamas” and they’ll continue. Until the international community condemns them completely for this, they will continue to their true goal.
If you step back and try to take emotion out of your consideration, Israel's actions don't support that statement. Israel has enough military power to have completely erased Gaza months ago, without sending in a single ground troop, and there would have been absolutely nothing Hamas could do about it.
The situation as it stands right now is basically a textbook example of why the concept of war crimes exists. Taking hostages is a war crime, as is having your fighters not wear a distinct uniform. That second one is critical here, because when that law is broken, it turns civilians into targets.
This war never was about getting hostages released.
The hostages gave the Israeli government a very nice and convenient excuse to do what they always wanted to do but never could.
It's the same as bush with 9/11 invading Iraq even though Osama bin Laden was known not to be there. He literally said he didn't care about bin Laden, let's go get Iraq's oil!
The Israeli government wants the Palestinian lands and the Palestinians, apparently, all dead or gone. This reminds me of some other very large and sad event in history, the name eludes me for a second....
For anyone interested, Wikipedia has a page on the current hostage situation and some history.
According to Wikipedia, one of the "deals" Hamas has offered Israel was that Isreal release all Palestinian prisoners. That would be thousands of prisoners in exchange for hostages Hamas took on the 7th of October.
But khamaaas just needs to hand over the hostages and the war will end! The ZioBots have been screaming this for the last 8 months it must be true! Surely they wouldn't gaslight people into saying this was never said!
And I'm sure the Israelis will be quite fond of this stance that flips the bird at literally the single part of this whole debacle that they themselves are interested in