Hamas and Israel agreed at the last minute on a deal to extend the Gaza truce for one more day, making Thursday the seventh day of the temporary ceasefire to facilitate the swap of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners.
According to Middle East Eye, the agreement was made after Hamas sent Israel a list of Israeli women and children it could release. The extension of the truce since the initial four-day pause has been conditioned on Hamas releasing ten hostages per day and Israel freeing more Palestinian prisoners.
“A list of women and children – in accordance with the terms of the outline [of the truce agreement last week] – was delivered to Israel a short time ago; therefore, the pause will continue,” the Israeli government said in a statement.
The extended truce is due to expire at 7 am local time on Friday unless another deal is reached. Qatar-mediated negotiations are expected to be more difficult as Hamas is looking for more concessions from Israel to release the Israeli soldiers they captured.
The exchanges so far have involved Hamas freeing Israeli women and children and Israel mainly releasing Palestinian women and children or people who were detained as minors.
Israeli officials have made clear they intend to resume the war soon and are not looking for a long-term ceasefire. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has vowed that Israeli operations will be bigger than before the truce.
Israel is expected to focus its next phase of operations on southern Gaza, which could incur even more civilian casualties as hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians from the north are concentrated in the area. The US is expressing concerns about the next phase but has reaffirmed its military aid to Israel is unconditional despite the mass civilian slaughter Israel has already committed.
It seems like Blinken is negotiating for Israel and a resumption of hostilities.
It is good he is not involved in the Qatar meetings.
It is for reasons such as these that I’ve begun to lose confidence in Israel and their subsequent response. What would be the point of this entire operation be if upper leadership such as Netanyahu would just continue to give terrorist and genocidal organizations such as Hamas the ability to take the time and resources to regroup and subsequently rearm after any successful counterattack the IDF would accomplish. How dare they legitimize and incentive the taking of hostages via negotiating with the very terrorists who’ve indiscriminately shot, genocided and burned entire cities and communities. The Israeli people are correct in their belief that their government has failed them through both their previous policy they could “manage” Hamas as well as being seemingly unable or unwilling to subsequently eliminate the terrorist and genocidal organization through treating them as if they would not be solely dedicated to the genocide of the Jewish people: https://disq.us/url?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.msn.com%2Fen-us%2Fnews%2Fworld%2Funderstanding-hamas-s-genocidal-ideology%2Far-AA1i0jaZ%3AcPp2dhnOy1Q8glT4lLsWw9c-1jw&cuid=18764. The Israeli state was founded on the principle of “Never Again” after the largest genocide in the history of the world was committed against their people, any coalition or government that would be unwilling or unable to follow this ceases to be the state’s legitimate leaders and as such should subsequently lose any and all political power they may have previously obtained. While replacing those whose mistakes refused to properly respond to the terrorist and genocidal incursion on October 7th will probably not bring peace or honor those who perished on that day, it is the only way to prevent their ever being a risk of such horrific incidents ever occurring again.