Why now? Why did it take 736 days?

为什么是现在？为什么花了整整736天？

That was the question coursing through the celebrations on the streets of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on Saturday night, as hundreds of thousands of people poured into Israel’s Hostage Square. They were anticipating the release early Monday of the 20 hostages believed still alive and the possible end of a brutal war that left the Gaza Strip destroyed, and Israel at once stronger and more diplomatically isolated than ever.

上周六晚，在特拉维夫和耶路撒冷的街头庆祝活动中，这个问题在人们心中涌动。成千上万人涌入以色列的“人质广场”，期盼着周一凌晨20名据信仍活着的人质获释，以及一场残酷战争的可能终结——这场战争导致加沙地带化为废墟，让以色列变得更强大的同时，却在外交上陷入前所未有的孤立。

Holding up photos of the remaining hostages, the crowds cheered Saturday evening at the mention of President Donald Trump, who many Israelis believe forced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to seize this moment. They listened intently to Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, address the cheering throngs.

人们高举剩下的人质的照片，在听到总统唐纳德·特朗普的名字时爆发出欢呼。许多以色列人认为，是特朗普迫使总理本雅明·内塔尼亚胡抓住了这一时机。他们专注聆听着特朗普总统的特使史蒂夫·维特科夫和女婿贾里德·库什纳向欢腾的民众发表讲话。

But overarching the moment was the question of whether this deal could have been done far sooner, when more hostages may have been alive, and before tens of thousands of Palestinians were killed. That argument lay behind the boos that ran through the crowd when Witkoff mentioned Netanyahu. Hearing the reaction, Witkoff tried to defend Netanyahu, insisting that “I was in the trenches with the prime minister” and saw how he was seeking “a safer, stronger future for the Jewish people.” That was met with more booing.

但此刻最核心的问题是：这项协议是否本可以更早达成？那样或许有更多人质存活，数万巴勒斯坦人也不至于丧生。当维特科夫提到内塔尼亚胡时，人群中响起的嘘声正源于此。听到这番反应，维特科夫试图为内塔尼亚胡辩护，坚称“我与总理并肩作战”，并见证他如何为犹太人民寻求“更安全、更强大的未来”。但这番话引来了更多嘘声。

Historians may argue for years whether the Israel-Hamas war could have ended a year ago this week, when Israeli forces tripped upon and killed Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas chief and architect of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Or, alternatively, whether Israel and Hamas missed a chance to build on the ceasefire that President Joe Biden and his aides left in place before Trump took over. Despite the fact that Witkoff was involved in the January deal, it did not stick, and early in Trump’s term the war resumed, bringing with it more death and suffering.

历史学家或许将为此争论多年——以色列与哈马斯的战争是否本可以在一年前的这个星期结束？那时以军偶然发现并击毙了哈马斯首领、2023年10月7日屠杀的策划者——叶海亚·辛瓦尔。又或者，以色列和哈马斯是否错过了一个机会，未能将拜登总统及其团队在特朗普上任前斡旋达成的停火协议进一步推进？当时维特科夫参与了1月份的协议谈判，但协议未能维持下去。特朗普上任不久，战争便再度爆发，导致了更多的死亡与苦难。

Debates over how wars could have ended sooner, and saved thousands or millions of lives, are hardly new. Historians are still arguing over whether Japan would have surrendered anyway if President Harry Truman had decided against dropping two atomic weapons; whether President Richard Nixon waited years too long to get out of Vietnam. Biden and Trump argued for an earlier exit from Afghanistan.

关于战争本可如何更早结束，从而挽救千万乃至千百万生命的争论，远不是什么新鲜的问题。历史学家仍在探讨：若杜鲁门总统当初未决定投放两颗原子弹，日本是否仍会投降？尼克松总统是否在越南战争撤军问题上拖延了数年？拜登与特朗普都曾主张更早撤出阿富汗。

史蒂夫·维特科夫与贾里德·库什纳、伊万卡·特朗普周六在特拉维夫的集会上。

“This is a different moment — we didn’t have then what President Trump has now,” Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, said in a telephone interview over the weekend. “Hamas is defeated as a military organization, isolated diplomatically, it’s lost its patrons — Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis — and it has alienated the people of Gaza.”

“当下形势截然不同——我们当时不具备特朗普总统如今拥有的条件，”拜登政府的国务卿布林肯周末在电话采访中表示。“如今哈马斯作为军事组织已被击败，外交上陷入孤立，失去了伊朗、真主党和胡塞武装等资助者，还疏远了加沙民众。”

He added: “Israel long ago achieved its war aims of destroying Hamas’ capacity to repeat Oct. 7 and killing the leaders responsible — at great cost to Palestinian civilians caught in the crossfire. The Israeli people want the remaining hostages home and the war to end.”

他还说：“以色列早已实现其战争目标——摧毁哈马斯重演10月7日事件的能力，并消灭相关负责人，但这也让陷入战火的巴勒斯坦平民付出了巨大代价。以色列民众希望剩余人质回家，也希望战争结束。”

Here is a look at some of the explanations for why the hostage release — and perhaps a new start for Gaza — is happening now.

以下是关于人质获释——以及加沙局势可能迎来新转机——的若干解析。

Feints, Bluffs and an Election

试探、虚张声势与选举因素

Two years ago this week, after the Oct. 7 attack, Biden traveled to Israel to show his solidarity. But he also issued a warning — strongly in private, his aides reported later, and more gently in public — that there was a risk to overreaction.

两年前的本周，即10月7日袭击事件后，拜登访问以色列以表支持。但拜登同时发出了警告——其助手事后透露，他在私下态度强硬，虽然公开场合较为温和——提醒以色列过度反应存在风险。

“Justice must be done,” Biden said on his one-day visit on Oct. 18, 2023. “But I caution that, while you feel that rage, don’t be consumed by it. After 9/11, we were enraged in the United States. While we sought justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.”

“正义必须得到伸张，”2023年10月18日，拜登在为期一天的访问中表示。“但我要提醒的是，即便满腔怒火，也不要被怒火吞噬。9·11事件后，美国也曾愤怒。我们寻求正义、实现正义的同时，也曾犯下错误。”

Biden was reacting to the fact that Israel had cut off virtually all food and fuel to Gaza. For a while, the United States kept the pressure off the Israelis, even vetoing a U.N. Security Council resolution to keep humanitarian corridors open to allow the flow of food and civilians. Biden would need time, U.S. officials maintained, to quietly negotiate a deal.

拜登此番表态，源于以色列当时几乎切断了对加沙的所有食品和燃料供应。有一段时间，美国并未对以色列施压，甚至否决了联合国安理会开放人道主义走廊以保障食品运输和民众撤离的决议。美国官员称，拜登需要时间通过秘密谈判达成协议。

But neither side was ready. Hamas spent the summer of 2024 arguing over how far Israeli forces would have to pull back along the Philadelphi corridor, a narrow strip along the border between Gaza and Egypt. “The blame is on Hamas, because it could have been done all these steps earlier, but they refused to discuss disarmament or relinquishing control,” said Amos Yadlin, a former head of military intelligence for Israel who runs MIND Israel, a strategic consulting company. “But it is also on Netanyahu, because it wasn’t until last summer that he was even willing to lay out demands for ending the war.”

但双方当时均未做好准备。2024年夏季，哈马斯就以色列军队需从菲拉德尔菲走廊（加沙与埃及边境的狭长地带）后撤的距离争论不休。“责任在哈马斯，因为所有这些步骤本可更早完成，他们却拒绝讨论解除武装或放弃控制权，”以色列前军事情报负责人、战略咨询公司MIND以色列负责人阿莫斯·亚德林表示。“但内塔尼亚胡也有责任，直到去年夏天，他才愿意提出结束战争的具体要求。”

Then Trump won the presidency back, and the Biden administration was determined to get a ceasefire in place by January, before it left office. It drafted a peace plan, much of which was quite similar to the “20 point plan” Trump recently issued. There was slow progress: More than 130 hostages had been released by the time the January ceasefire took place.

随后特朗普再次当选总统，拜登政府决心在1月离任前促成停火，为此起草了一份和平计划，其中大部分内容与特朗普近期公布的“20点计划”高度相似。谈判进展缓慢：到1月停火协议生效时，已有超过130多名人质获释。

“We handed over a ceasefire that silenced the guns, had hostages coming out and aid going in, along with a day-after plan to make it permanent,” Blinken said. But when the new administration took over, “the moment was squandered,” he added. “Israel and Hamas went back to war for eight months.”

“我们提交的停火协议实现了停火、人质释放和援助进入，还附带了一份实现停火永久化的战后规划，”布林肯表示。但新政府上任后，“这个契机被浪费了，”他说。“以色列和哈马斯重新陷入了长达8个月的战争。”

Israeli officials tell a different story. Biden was a lame duck, they noted, and disengaged. Trump was a known entity, less likely to lecture Netanyahu in private or public. They put their money on a new president, and a new negotiating team.

以色列官员则给出了不同说法。他们指出，拜登当时已是跛脚鸭总统，对事务的参与度下降；而特朗普是一个熟悉的人物，不太会在私下或公开场合对内塔尼亚胡说教。因此，以色列选择押注新总统及其新谈判团队。

A Changed Battlefield in 2025

2025年战局的转变

Much changed in Israel’s favor in the new year.

新的一年里，诸多变化开始对以色列有利。

Sinwar’s death sent Hamas into a leadership crisis. Israel’s military pressure grew as Hamas’ supply of ammunition was depleted. And “the 12-day war with Iran really moved the needle,” said Brett McGurk, who had negotiated in the region since the Bush administration and was running the talks for Biden. Suddenly, Hamas realized that the country that had both bankrolled and supplied it could no longer be relied upon.

辛瓦尔的死亡使哈马斯陷入领导层危机；随着哈马斯弹药耗尽，以色列的军事压力不断加大；“与伊朗的12天战争真正改变了局势，”自布什政府时期就参与该地区谈判、曾为拜登政府主持相关对话的布雷特·麦古克表示。哈马斯突然意识到，长期为其提供资金和武器的伊朗已不再可靠。

以色列6月对德黑兰实施空袭造成的破坏。伊朗长期以来一直是哈马斯的资助者。

Multiple factors, Palestinian analysts say, pushed Hamas to begin rethinking the value of continuing to hold the hostages.

巴勒斯坦分析人士称，多重因素促使哈马斯开始重新审视“继续扣押人质”的价值。

“In the beginning, Hamas thought taking the hostages would deter the Israeli government from waging a big war,” said Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian professor of political science in Egypt, who fled Gaza early in the war. Now, the logic of holding hostages may have flipped: Rather than protect Gaza from attack, several analysts have noted, their existence was giving Netanyahu an excuse to press ahead.

“起初，哈马斯认为扣押人质能阻止以色列发动大规模战争，”战争初期从加沙逃离、现居埃及的巴勒斯坦裔政治学教授姆哈伊马尔·阿布萨达表示。如今，多名分析人士指出，扣押人质的逻辑可能已经逆转：人质的存在非但不能保护加沙免遭攻击，反而给了内塔尼亚胡继续推进战争的借口。

“If Hamas said no, the war would have gone on — the bloodshed, the destruction and the killing would have gone on and on,” Abusada said. “So Hamas decided: Let’s just accept this offer and believe the guarantees that the war will not return.”

“如果哈马斯拒绝协议，战争就会持续——流血、破坏和杀戮将无休无止，”阿布萨达说。“因此哈马斯决定：接受这份协议，相信战争不会重启的承诺。”

The Trump Factor

特朗普的因素

Trump famously has little time or patience for traditional diplomacy. If the State Department’s approach to ceasefires and peace negotiations is to labor over maps and work through diplomatic channels, defining boundaries and anticipating loopholes, Trump negotiates the way he struck real estate deals in New York: in broad concepts, leaving the details to others.

众所周知，特朗普对传统外交缺乏耐心，不愿为此花费时间。若美国国务院推动停火与和平谈判的方式是反复推敲地图、通过外交渠道协商边界、预判漏洞，那么特朗普的谈判风格则如同他在纽约促成房地产交易的方式：先确立宏观概念，再将细节交由他人处理。

Administration officials say the result suggests that this should be Trump’s model for the future. “He pursued a very nontraditional diplomacy with people who were not 40-year diplomats, but people who brought a fresh perspective to it,” Vice President JD Vance said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “And, of course, the president was criticized for it. The diplomatic team was criticized for it.”

特朗普政府官员表示，此次成果表明，这应成为特朗普未来的外交模式。副总统万斯上周日在哥伦比亚广播公司《面向全国》(Face the Nation)节目中说：“他采用了非常非传统的外交方式，同他一起工作的不是有40年经验的外交官，而是能带来新视角的人。当然总统因此受到批评。整个外交团队都因此受到批评。”

And Trump signaled the importance of a deal by bringing Kushner back into the swirl of diplomacy, hoping that his business connections with Qatar and other players in the region could be leveraged to good advantage. It was Kushner who negotiated the Abraham Accords in the first term, in which Arab states recognized Israel — a huge step. Of course, those connections fuel Trump’s critics, who see a blurring of diplomacy and for-profit deals.

特朗普还通过让库什纳重返外交核心凸显协议的重要性——他希望库什纳与卡塔尔及该地区其他相关方的商业联系能发挥作用。库什纳在特朗普第一任期内促成了《亚伯拉罕协议》，推动阿拉伯国家承认以色列，这是历史性的一步。当然，这些联系也引发了特朗普批评者的质疑，他们认为这模糊了外交与营利性交易的界限。

But the Israeli attempt to kill Hamas negotiators in Qatar, dropping a bomb on their temporary residence, both angered Trump and awakened him. It gave the United States the opportunity to rally Arab states around the 20-point plan, even if they thought many of the details would not work.

而以色列试图击毙在卡塔尔的哈马斯谈判代表，轰炸他们的临时住所的行为既激怒了特朗普，也让他警醒。这一事件让美国有机会推动阿拉伯国家支持20点计划，即便这些国家认为计划中的许多细节不切实际。

And so when Trump called Netanyahu to the White House in September, following the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, the prime minister was in no position to resist him. He had to call the prime minister of Qatar and read an apology to him — while White House photographers recorded the moment. The message was clear: Netanyahu was now in a new world, where he had to heed some American mandates.

因此，在联合国大会开幕后，当特朗普于9月召内塔尼亚胡前往白宫时，这位以色列总理已无法拒绝。他不得不致电卡塔尔首相并宣读道歉声明——而白宫摄影师记录下了这一时刻。信号很明确：内塔尼亚胡如今身处全新格局，必须服从美国的部分指令。

Then Trump pressed the Israeli leader to sign on to his 20-point plan, with its ceasefire and the insertion of a “technocratic” temporary government in Gaza backed by an international stability force. While it fell short of Netanyahu’s maximalist demands, he had to agree to the document. He was both indebted to Trump and aware that provoking his capricious counterpart could lead to negative consequences for himself and for Israel.

随后，特朗普施压内塔尼亚胡签署他的20点计划，该计划包含停火内容，并在加沙成立由“技术官僚”组成的临时政府，由国际维和部队提供支持。尽管该计划未满足内塔尼亚胡的最高要求，但他不得不签署。他既欠特朗普人情，也清楚若激怒这位反复无常的对手，自己和以色列都可能面临负面后果。

He may have also been betting that Hamas would reject the deal, because it required the terrorist group to disarm and leave the territory.

或许内塔尼亚胡还曾押注哈马斯会拒绝该协议，因为协议要求这个恐怖组织解除武装并撤离该地区。

Hamas said “yes, but,” agreeing to the first terms — the hostage release in return for a prisoner swap — but insisting on more negotiations on the critical next steps. Trump ignored the “but,” and simply took the partial yes as full agreement.

哈马斯的回应是“同意，但有条件”，他们接受第一阶段条款——释放人质以换取囚犯交换——但坚持就关键的后续步骤进行更多谈判。而特朗普无视这个“但”字，直接将哈马斯的部分同意视为了完全认可。