The Israeli cabinet voted early Wednesday morning to approve a Qatar-brokered hostage deal with Hamas that will free at least 50 Israelis in exchange for a four-day ceasefire and other steps.
According to Axios, the first phase of the deal will involve Hamas releasing about 50 Israeli women and children, while Israel is expected to release about 150 Palestinian women and children. The releases will take place during the four-day pause.
Israel will also allow 300 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza from Egypt during the pause and for some fuel to be delivered. In a potential second phase of the deal, Hamas could release dozens of more hostages in exchange for an extension of the ceasefire by several days.
An Israeli official said that over the next 24 hours, the names of the Palestinian prisoners who will be released will be made public. This will be done to give Israelis the opportunity to appeal their release, signaling their freedom is not guaranteed.
The deal with Hamas received support from most ministers within the Israeli government except three members of the extremist Jewish Power Party. Ahead of the cabinet vote, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed the war would continue after the short ceasefire.
“We are at war, and we will continue the war,” Netanyahu said. “We will continue until we achieve all our goals.”
Israel and Hamas had been negotiating through Qatar for weeks, but Israel had rejected earlier proposals. Both sides signaled that a deal was close before the cabinet vote.
The release of the two hundred or so hostages is most welcome, but what about the two million some hostages who are being held up in Gaza with no where to go, and will only get bombed on again after the ceasefire here ends in four days? They’re only taking a break; Nutandyahoo and Genocide Joe need to be permanently stopped.
Hamas stopped it already. At least for four days. Of course, Hamas is much weaker than Israel but, eventually, other Muslim countries and Muslim organizations will interfere.
Hamas knows they can’t trust the Israelis, but they have nothing to lose. But it will show the whole world if Israeli Zionists are even willing to negotiate in good faith.
Do you think that Israel trust Hamas? Want to bet which side takes the first “pot shot” of the battle pause?
Israel is most likely to fabricate an excuse first, but that is not a good move for PR, since they have no credibility as is.
GRRR
what
Israel and Hamas had been negotiating through Qatar for weeks, but Israel had rejected earlier proposals.
Want to bet which side wants the other side to take a “pot shot”? And want to bet which side gets blamed for taking a pot shot regardless of who actually takes the pot shot?
My bet is Hamas fires first and Israel gets blamed. Why? Hamas started this war and Israel is getting blamed for the war.
Israel is getting blamed for what Israel is doing. Collective punishment on a densely populated area made up largely of civilians with little to absolutely no regard for human life.
Use civilian hospitals as military sites-war crime.
Even if true, it doesn’t exonerate Israeli war crimes.
It looks like a defeat of Israeli army and, what is no less important, a geopolitical defeat of Israel. One Israeli owned ship is already arrested in Red Sea by Yemen fighters. Nothing can stop them to do it again and again. Other Muslim countries are also not particular friendly to Israel after this bloody mess in Palestine.
“Nothing can stop them to do it again and again” Yea right. Let see, one can start with putting shoulder fired anti aircraft missiles on the ships. That would be the end of a helicopter assault they used. Than a few Javelins programmed to hit speed boats. That would leave Houthi only option is to sink a ship with a anti ship cruise missile. And that will start a war.
I was accused of being an “idiot conspiracy theorist” for saying “Hamas is a Netanyahu tool.” Too bad I couldn’t convince my accuser to read any of those articles: https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/benjamin-netanyahu-israel/
https://www.timesofisrael.com/for-years-netanyahu-propped-up-hamas-now-its-blown-up-in-our-faces/
https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-10-20/ty-article-opinion/.premium/a-brief-history-of-the-netanyahu-hamas-alliance/0000018b-47d9-d242-abef-57ff1be90000
Unless Hamas is going to use the time to smuggle a doomsday weapon into Tel Aviv, this exercise will accomplish nothing of significance.
This is PR, pure and simple. Nothing of lasting value to the Palestinian people will come from it. Israel’s goal is the destruction of the Palestinian state, now and in the future. The Israelis are no one’s friend.
But the Israelis will be forced to show their true color. If nothing else they will lose more in the global PR war, they will gain more enemies than they already made.
Israel was subject to a pogrom that violated all laws of wars and decency.
Do you expect them to sit back and take it?
One might expect Israelis to hold the IDF accountable for massacring at least 260 Jewish civilians on 7.Oct
https://thegrayzone.com/2023/10/27/israels-military-shelled-burning-tanks-helicopters/
That has been debunked by multiple sources.
Sure it has – all Israeli sources say the IDF masssacred Israeli civilians on 7.Oct
Hannibal Directive
yes…to be hoped for, internationally and in the US: a wider consensus re Israel’s violence-enforced apartheid…a strengthened bds movement, and increased institutional and economic isolation…
…just as, it is to be hoped, the White House/foreign policy establishment’s anti-democratic rejection of strong demands for a ceasefire will undermine the political authority – undermine the essential legitimacy – of the US’s bipartisan unconditional support…
YOU totally rock! I love ya man!
1/ awwww….
2/ but seriously…i use the word hope advisedly…the ‘hopeful’ idea that protests at Israel’s shocking collective punishment of gazans can change anything – which is a hope for ultimate justice – is precisely that, a hope…
…a hope which may or may not prove justified…though I’d argue activists must believe their acts may have power…
I disagree, Israel is only killing civilians, Hamas is killing soldiers. The Government is collapsing. The world is horrified by the events in Gaza. Its not a humanitarian crisis its a crisis of humanity.
To be honest i dont think the United States of Atrocities will survive this. Time will tell.
US government got in a difficult situation. On one hand it can’t abandon it’s Zionist friends. On the other hand, the open support of the genocide of Palestinian people is terribly unprofitable geopolitically.
White is black,war is peace-the purpose of the Israeli incursion is to weaken if not destroy Hamas .Appartently Israeli babies are so powerful that they can become soldiers at the age of nine months and must be taken as hostages.
I disagree. I agree with Norman Finkelstein, author, activist, when he said that when it is over, and I mean over, Palestinians will be consigned to the Sinai desert to die, nothing will be done, it will be forgotten, just like after Cast Lead and Protective Edge.
Here is the interview of Mr. Finkelstein by Chris Hedges: https://www.mintpressnews.com/chris-hedges-israel-culture-deceit/286061/ It is about 53 minutes long. The video of the interview is part of an article in mintpress.com
I deeply hope Norman Finkelstein is wrong this time.
GRRR what
All the actors have their reasons. Biden wouldn’t stand up to BB for justice, truth, Law, or human sympathy, just his poll number. But, in any case, Hamas is the one in the cockpit, knows what’s best, and desrves our confidence and support.
“Hamas…desrves our confidence and support”?
Who do you believe you speak for? Not for the many political faces of the pro-Palestinian movement I have seen:
1/ The main western pro-Palestinian press – Mondoweiss, Middle East Eye, Al Jazeera, etc – express no pro-Hamas sympathies. Neither do antiwar sites like, for example, Antiwar or commondreams, to name only a few.
2/ Neither do the best known pro-Palestinian organizations, such as Jewish Voice for Peace, or Students for Justice in Palestine – in which Palestinian and Arab Americans are well represented – support Hamas.
3/ Neither – at any of the 4 pro-Palestinian actions I have marched with in NYC – have I witnessed ANYTHING – not a single poster, not a single chant – by the Palestinian American, Arab American, Jewish American, and (presumably) Christian marchers suggesting support for Hamas.
4/ This, despite the ongoing, defamatory attacks of right wing pro-Israeli groups like AIPAC that smear pro-Palestinians as ‘antisemites’ and ‘Hamas supporters.’
Gazans.
1/ No doubt some Gazans support Hamas and would agree that you speak for them.
2/ I have essentially argued that you do not speak for the greater pro-Palestinian movement, which does not take the position that “Hamas deserves our confidence and support.”
3/ I hope you are an outlier, since – as I also noted – the US and Israel are engaged in a smear campaign charging the pro-Palestinian movement is pro-Hamas.
That campaign’s goals are to block political resistance to Israel and its US enabler abroad, and to rationalize Israel’s continued war crimes against Gaza.
4/ Like Israeli assertions that ‘there are no innocent Gazans,’ statements such as yours – claiming Hamas speaks for Gazans – effectively support Israel and the US’s lying smear campaign.
This is so twisted it’s too tedious to reply. Suffice to say (1) those who still take their cue from Zionist media are too lost to care about, (2) throughout Islam the Street has made clear its support for Hamas, and (3) you end by supporting a lie.
1/ “those who still take their cue from Zionist media are too lost to care about”
Obviously false:
a/ mainstream media is internally contested, as w/the LA Times’ call for a ceasefire despite massive Israeli/US propaganda.
b/ Plus – vs being “too lost to care about” – mainstream media reader comment threads show much pro-Palestinian support and criticism of US/Israel. Which you’d know if you bothered ‘taking the pulse’ of citizen views by reading a comment thread.
2/ “throughout Islam the Street has made clear its support for Hamas”
Advance thanks for supporting an otherwise worthless claim.
3/ “you end by supporting a lie.”
LIARS GET THE WALL!!!
The MSM, Liberalism in general, is long a master at “virtue signaling”, aka hypocrisy. It’s worse than meaningless. And the lie I was referring to “the Oct. 7 Hamas atrocity”, still obligatory in the MSM though pretty thoroughly discredited by Israeli media itself, for weeks now.
“the…deal will involve Hamas releasing about 50 Israeli women and children, while Israel is expected to release about 150 Palestinian women and children”…
…into Gaza?…
My thoughts too. Where they will die seems to be the only question for them.
Where else…?! They can be bombed after the pause…! They would be safer in Israel prisons…!
The where else of course is the West Bank.
That is a good question. At this point an Israel jail might be a better place that Gaza.
“hostage deal”
LOL making a deal!
OMG “making a deal!”
quotation marks AND an exclamation mark
OMG what.
GRRR
once upon a time i used to say “what”
now i am going to say “what” and “GRRR”
what & GRRR
how dare you
edit) = sons of a bitch
GRRR
what
The Smotrich notsees will just wait until they take over after Netanyahu falls then relauch their genocidal lebensraum crusade.
You can’t make this stuff up. The Financial Times just said “The Middle East is already changing for the better.”
Hey Hey Ho Ho Genocide Joe has got to go.
Hamas has won this battle. Israel and the US are now talking ceasefire, another huge defeat for the US and NATO. Along with a huge defeat for the US and NATO in Ukraine, And after a recent defeat for the US and NATO in Afghanistan.
Now its just the war crimes tribunals. Genocide Joe on Skid Row.
Human beings are a biological species possessed of biases and prejudices, which manifest I self interest.
The Palestinians and the recovery of Palestine or the modern re-creation of a Palestinian State is not in the self interest of the United States, China, Russia, England, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or any Nation State.
Some think and document “The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine” from 1917.*
An accurate and historically documented is a War on Palestine starting 1798.**
The present War on The Palestinians and the recovery of Palestine or the modern re-creation of a Palestinian State will continue simply because it is no Nation States’ self interest for the creation of a State of Palestine.
Again, the Palestinians and a Palestinian State are in one’s self interest.
dennis hanna
* The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine
A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017
by Rashid Khalidi
A landmark history of one hundred years of war waged against the Palestinians from the foremost US historian of the Middle East, told through pivotal events and family history In 1899, Yusuf Diya al-Khalidi, mayor of Jerusalem, alarmed by the Zionist call to create a Jewish national home in Palestine, wrote a letter aimed at Theodore Herzl: the country had an indigenous people who would not easily accept their own displacement. He warned of the perils ahead, ending his note, “in the name of God, let Palestine be left alone.” Thus Rashid Khalidi, al-Khalidi’s great-great-nephew, begins this sweeping history, the first general account of the conflict told from an explicitly Palestinian perspective. Drawing on a wealth of untapped archival materials and the reports of generations of family members—mayors, judges, scholars, diplomats, and journalists—The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine upends accepted interpretations of the conflict, which tend, at best, to describe a tragic clash between two peoples with claims to the same territory. Instead, Khalidi traces a hundred years of colonial war on the Palestinians, waged first by the Zionist movement and then Israel, but backed by Britain and the United States, the great powers of the age. He highlights the key episodes in this colonial campaign, from the 1917 Balfour Declaration to the destruction of Palestine in 1948, from Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon to the endless and futile peace process. Original, authoritative, and important, The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine is not a chronicle of victimization, nor does it whitewash the mistakes of Palestinian leaders or deny the emergence of national movements on both sides. In reevaluating the forces arrayed against the Palestinians, it offers an illuminating new view of a conflict that continues to this day.
**Napoleon’s Egypt,
Invading the Middle East
by Juan Cole
Juan Cole tells the story of Napoleon’s invasion of Egypt. Revealing the young general’s reasons for leading the expedition against Egypt in 1798 and showcasing his fascinating views of the Orient, Cole delves into the psychology of the military titan and his entourage. He paints a multi-faceted portrait of the daily travails of the soldiers in Napoleon’s army, including how they imagined Egypt, how their expectations differed from what they found, and how they grappled with military challenges in a foreign land. Cole ultimately reveals how Napoleon’s invasion, the first modern attempt to invade the Arab world, invented and crystallized the rhetoric of liberal imperialism.
Napoleon and the French army left Egypt in 1799, but the French remained in Egypt for another two years, until they finally surrendered to the British on Sept. 2, 1801 turning over, among other things, the prized Rosetta stone.
Before he departed in October 1799, Napoleon captured Gaza and Jaffa (part of modern Tel Aviv), but the roguish Sir Sidney Smith engineered a huge British victory at Acre, the city known as “the key to Palestine.”
—–
Human beings are a biological species possessed of biases and prejudices, which manifest I self interest.
The Palestinians and the recovery of Palestine or the modern re-creation of a Palestinian State is not in the self interest of the United States, China, Russia, England, Saudi Arabia, Iran, or any Nation State.
—–
Nation-states aren’t human beings.
Donetsk in 2014-2015 looked exactly like Gaza today. Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko were left free to ethnically cleanse, mass murder and collectively punish the Donbass. We were all OK with that though right? Cos you know we just hate Russian’s so much, but not racist at all.
In the Donbass we see what an appropriate response to ethnic cleansing, collective punishment, mass murder and genocide is…..ARMED RESISTANCE. The resistance against NATO in Ukraine has destroyed; 537 Aircraft, 254 helicopters, 9095 UAV’s, 442 Anti Aircraft systems, 13539 tanks inc. APC’s, 1185 multiple rocket launchers, 7145 field artillery and 15507 military automotive equipment. Approx. $1 Trillion of NATO hardware.
WW3 started in Ukraine in 2014 according to Jens Stoltenberg NATO Secretary General. The combined Western NATO nations overthrew the government in a violent bloody coup and installed Nazi’s in power.
The United States of Atrocities will choke on Moscow’s terms for peace in Ukraine. Make no mistake its a huge defeat for Nazism the US and NATO.
Turkey is about to intervene in Gaza…..1000 ship flotilla is heading to Gaza. Turkey is a supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood. If Israel murders Turkish nationals as they did in 2010 then its going to be a regional war.
BTW Hamas is Sunni Islam, an outreach of the Muslim Brotherhood. Remind me again what branch of Islam Iran is? Thats right Shia Islam.
So when they tell us that Hamas is acting on behalf of Iran and we bomb them, its all a pack of lies. Nothing they tell us is the truth.