The hostages clearly haber been important from day one.
But this is a huge show of power for Israel. Yes, Israel is hated across the world by most rational, informed, and decent people but there are a lot of people who aren’t rational, informed, and decent. That is to say that Israel still has lots of supporters, including the media which is still very powerful in this whole thing.
But even more than that, Israel has more military power than anybody else in the region because they have the USA in their pocket. This is essentially a big fukk you to Hamas/Iran, letting them know that Israel can’t really be touched. Of course, Israel might suffer some retaliation but it won’t be anything that will cause anything close to the scale of damage they’ve inflicted on Gaza. And also, that’s what Israel wants so they can call big bro America to wipe out their enemies.
I’m open to being wrong of course but that’s my initial read on it.