The last thing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs now, one week before the March 2 election, is a new barrage of rocket fire from Gaza, regardless of which Palestinian group is behind it. All it would do is tarnish his image as “Mr. Security” and ruin his efforts to reach an arrangement, just when Israel is doing everything it can to avoid an armed conflict with Hamas. This includes sending the head of the Mossad to Qatar to convince them to continue providing financial aid to Hamas. In fact, Israel has gone so far as to grant 7,000 permits to Palestinians from Gaza, allowing them to work in Israel. What it all boils down to is another haphazard decision by Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, which reshuffled the deck for Netanyahu and led to an escalation of tensions in the south.

It began Feb. 23 with Palestinians documenting an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) bulldozer dragging the body of a Palestinian allegedly with Islamic Jihad along the border of the Gaza Strip, near the town of Khan Yunis. The IDF claims he and another terrorist were trying to plant a bomb alongside the border fence. The photo, which enraged the people of Gaza, showed young Palestinians trying to prevent the bulldozer from collecting the body. All in all, it looked like an immoral act of abuse by “the most moral army in the world.” Bennett responded with arrogance to this criticism, adopting Netanyahu’s old trick of blaming the left: “I’m fed up with the hypocritical criticism of the left over the ‘inhumanity’ of using a bulldozer to collect the body of a terrorist who tried to kill Israelis. To all you kind-hearted people out there, you’re the ones who are being inhumane! Hamas still has the bodies of [IDF soldiers] Hadar [Goldin] and Oron [Shaul].”

As criticism of the IDF’s mistreatment of the body intensified, Bennett’s partner in Yamina, Ayelet Shaked, spoke out in support of his decision: “When the Minister of Defense of a sovereign country decides not to give in to a terrorist organization that holds the bodies of its fallen soldiers, you (meaning the left) lose your humanity by refusing to recognize that it is necessary in order to bring our boys home.”

Both Bennett and Shaked are certainly aware that the bodies of terrorists, or for that matter, even live Palestinian prisoners arrested while trying to cross the border, are not real bargaining chips in negotiations with Hamas. Ever since Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Israel has been holding indirect talks with Hamas to get the bodies of Goldin and Shaul back, but to no avail. Hamas refuses to link the understandings reached in its arrangement with Israel with the return of the fallen soldiers’ bodies or the two civilians, Avera Mengistu and Hisham el-Sayed, that it is holding hostage. The defense establishment has already come to terms with the idea that a deal like that comes with a price tag, and that its implementation depends on Israel’s willingness to pay, i.e., to release hundreds of Hamas prisoners held by Israel in exchange for the bodies. As of now, there is no willingness on the Israeli side. Goldin’s brother Tzur said as much last December: “My brother is not part of the arrangement. His name didn’t come up [in the arrangement talks] in any way, at any stage.”