A Hamas leader and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu both signaled on Tuesday that they might be close to reaching an agreement on Hamas releasing hostages in exchange for a short ceasefire.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas’s senior political leader based in Qatar, said Hamas officials are “approaching a truce agreement” with Israel. Netanyahu said Israel was working on a hostage deal and that he hoped “we will have good news soon.”
The Israeli government announced that Netanyahu would be holding a cabinet meeting on Tuesday “in light of developments on the issue of the release of our hostages.” Over in Washington, President Biden said he believed a deal was “very close.”
According to The New York Times, the outline of the deal involves Hamas immediately releasing about 50 women and children in exchange for Israel releasing 100 Palestinian women and children it has arbitrarily detained and a five-day ceasefire. Other reports have said Hamas would release more hostages throughout the five-day pause in fighting.
Israel and Hamas have been engaged in Qatari-brokered negotiations for weeks now, and Israel has rejected previous potential hostage deals. A Hamas official told Al Jazeera that the current negotiations are focused on how long the pause in fighting will last, the mechanisms for exchanging prisoners, and the delivery of aid during the ceasefire.
The Biden administration has supported the idea of “humanitarian pauses” in Gaza to facilitate more aid and the release of hostages but refuses to call for a lasting ceasefire, demonstrating the US’s commitment to backing Israel’s brutal onslaught. So far, the Israeli campaign in Gaza is estimated to have killed over 13,000 Palestinians, including over 5,500 children, but the numbers are not confirmed as Gaza’s Health Ministry says it’s now impossible to count the dead.
In negotiation for weeks? During which time more and more Palestinian children have been killed and maimed. What is so difficult about Israel releasing all 5000 hostages is has who are languishing in jails, without charge, for what is left of the hostages (Israeli hostages released, and a woman who is still a hostage, have confirmed that 50 hostages have been killed by Israeli bombs. So, a few hostages on each side are released, then what? Cease fire to release the remaining hostages on each side? Or, continue the genocide, ethnic cleansing? I think option 2 is what Israel has in mind. Joe has asked Sisi to accommodate the Nakba, and he was refused. There will be no 2 stage solution, or a 1 state solution (where Israel treats Palestinians as equals in business, politically). Not as long as the ultra right Zionists are in the Israeli administration. Oh, if there is a humanitarian delivery by the UN, Israel will sift each and every truck and parcel. For days.
You need to take a step back and read your own comments supporting Putin’s war in ukraine over the last 2 years.
Your bitching about Israel actions against Palestine make no sense given your support for Putin’s actions in Ukraine.
In other words, STFU, you hypocrite.
“Not as long as Zionists are in the Israeli administration.”
Fixed, no charge.
The problem is that Zionism is a racist colonizing ideology that inevitably leads to ethnic cleansing. When the indigenous resist ethnic cleansing, they are labeled terrorists and the result is genocide. Here is a link to a 1937 letter from “socialist” Zionist David Ben Gurion to his son confirming that even for the left wing Zionists, Palestinians would never be equal to Zionists in their homeland.
https://www.palestineremembered.com/download/B-G%20LetterTranslation.pdf
Zionism is a lot like Manifest Destiny. There were Americans, even American military leaders who wanted to share the land with the Indians and politicians in Washington who pretended or chose to be ignorant of the genocide unfolding on the frontier.
The most important difference between the Zionist colonization project and Manifest Destiny is that in the 19th century there were only a few hundred thousand Native Americans in pre-literate mostly stone age and largely nomadic cultures in the USA attempting to resist millions of whites from industrialized societies. Palestinians actually outnumber the Zionists and have historically been part of an advanced Islamic civilization.
If the Palestinians survive, they will eventually win. It is up to us to stop the genocide that has be going on in slow motion for 75 years and is now accelerating.
Israel : “Thanks for the hostages. Ceasefire’s good for 5.”
Hamas : “Days ?”
Israel : “…four…three…”
Sounds like thanks to Hanas, the Gazans will end up with less land than they had before. They are joining the Ukrainian club.
And after that aid gets in and those poor people get some relief, the killing will resume.
Several weeks ago I predicted that Israel would agree to a ceasefire when there were 14,000 Palestinian casualties to preserve the IDF’s “Golden Mean” of a 10 to 1 ratio of Palestinian to Israeli casualties. Sadly, I appear to have been right.
Although Netanyahu wants to continue the war, only the United States has the muscle to occupy Gaza for Israel after the carnage ends. Look to Biden to announce in a few weeks that he “pressured” Netanyahu to agree to allow US “peacekeepers” to occupy Gaza and to bring the PA back to act as a figurehead government. I hope this doesn’t come to pass, but Israel can’t continue fighting much longer.
Israel is a small country and cannot keep 300,000 troops in the field for more than a few weeks. Even with unlimited US aid, Israeli society would unravel under the strain of a long term mobilization. The IDF is not designed for a war of attrition. Israel has been unable to effectively engage Hamas who prepared for an Israeli invasion for decades. This is almost purely a genocidal war against the
Palestinian people. Israel failed to defeat Hamas.