1y ago

Israel, Hamas agree deal for release of Gaza hostages, truce

www.reuters.com Israel, Hamas agree deal for release of Gaza hostages, truce

Israel's government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.

GAZA/TEL AVIV, Nov 22 (Reuters) - Israel's government and Hamas agreed on Wednesday to a four-day pause in fighting to allow the release of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for 150 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel, and the entry of humanitarian aid into the besieged enclave.

World News @beehaw.org

Israel, Hamas agree on four-day truce, hostage release and aid into Gaza

www.reuters.com /world/middle-east/israeli-government-debates-deal-release-gaza-hostages-truce-2023-11-21/

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This is such good news. Now the challenge is to keep both sides from reigniting.
I don't really know what Hamas and Haniyeh and Sinwar want, so it's hard to speculate what they'll do, but I know that Netanyahu is trying to reignite the war as hard as he can, and will be desperate to see the ceasefire ended prematurely under circumstances he can blame on Hamas.
For those who haven't followed his career (and his actions in the least week in particular) this seems abundantly clear. The absolute worst thing that could happen to him would be a deescalation that leads to an political negotiations. I really hope the US antiwar movement is prepared to increase their pressure, because I believe it's made the difference in getting us this far. As furious as I've been at Biden's response, I have read multiple reports that the US was far more involved in hostage negotiations than Israel, so I will give Biden this sliver of credit if people actually come home. But he really needs to stop propping up Bibi if he wants to land this plane for real.
- I don’t really know what Hamas and Haniyeh and Sinwar want
  Are you serious? They want the complete destruction of Israel. Have you never read anything Hamas has put out?
  
  I think they might mean "want in an immediate sense". Even Hamas isn't deluded enough to think that they're capable of destroying Israel at this moment.
  
  No, but they knew exactly what the Israeli reaction would be, and that said reaction would end up providing a wave of freshly minted fighters.
  
  Yeah, but I mean, what is their goal now? Like, in the next few months kind of immediate, the kind of immediate that would cause them to accept a truce? Freshly minted fighters don't mean much if Israel gets away with ethnic cleansing, after all.
  
  Goal now is to get Israel to withdraw and use hostages to extract concessions including the release of kidnapped Palestinians in Israeli jails and humanitarian aid for beleaguered civilians. The military hostages are probably the highest value from a negotiation standpoint and will be kept the longest.
  
  Rebuild all of their terror infrastructure and plan the next murder/rape/kidnapping of Israeli citizens.
  
  I would bet the fights will continue after. Also, Israel has not done ethnic cleansing in Gaza.
  Edit: Though I agree that in certain cases (e.g. 1948), they didn't deal either with the situation well
  
  There's a handful of people that really don't want to acknowledge that
  
  And these 150 prisoners are Hamas terrorists that will be exchanged for 50 innocent civilians.
  So hamas will have more terrorists on their side to fan the flames for Netinyahu’s next response.
  
  They're Palestinian women and children, not terrorists. It's a trade of innocents for innocents
  
  13 women mostly convicted of stabbings.
  Edit: 33 women are on the list of 300 total, I counted the Hebrew source material myself. 15+ is of those with stabbing charges and convictions or general attempted murder.
  Overwhelming majority of minors did fucked up shit.
  https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/DynamicCollectors/is-db?skip=0
  https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestinian-just-convicted-of-stabbing-her-neighbor-may-be-freed-in-hamas-deal/
  
  They are terrorists.
  Israel didn’t kidnap them for no reason. Unlike what Hamas does.
  Go vote for Trump and believe in fake news.
  
  The over a thousand people held without charges would disagree with you. Are trusted human rights organizations fake news now?
  
  I read the 2017 charter where Hamas says they will accept a 2 state solution
  
  Do you mean this part:
  Hamas believes that no part of the land of Palestine shall be compromised or conceded, irrespective of the causes, the circumstances and the pressures and no matter how long the occupation lasts. Hamas rejects any alternative to the full and complete liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.
  Or perhaps this part:
  Resisting the occupation with all means and methods is a legitimate right guaranteed by divine laws and by international norms and laws. At the heart of these lies armed resistance, which is regarded as the strategic choice for protecting the principles and the rights of the Palestinian people.
  Oh wait, there's more:
  A real state of Palestine is a state that has been liberated. There is no alternative to a fully sovereign Palestinian State on the entire national Palestinian soil, with Jerusalem as its capital.
  They define "Palestinian soil" earlier:
  Palestine, which extends from the River Jordan in the east to the Mediterranean in the west and from Ras Al-Naqurah in the north to Umm Al-Rashrash in the south, is an integral territorial unit. It is the land and the home of the Palestinian people. The expulsion and banishment of the Palestinian people from their land and the establishment of the Zionist entity therein do not annul the right of the Palestinian people to their entire land and do not entrench any rights therein for the usurping Zionist entity.
  They have only 1 segment that even hints that they might accept a 2 state solution:
  However, without compromising its rejection of the Zionist entity and without relinquishing any Palestinian rights, Hamas considers the establishment of a fully sovereign and independent Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital along the lines of the 4th of June 1967, with the return of the refugees and the displaced to their homes from which they were expelled, to be a formula of national consensus.
  Which is pretty hard to take at face as an acceptance of a two state solution when it literally says in the sentence before that that they reject any alternative other than "from the river to the sea" and in the sentence after completely reject the Oslo accords.
  
  Can you share a link? I've been looking for source documents like this.
  
  Their 2017 Charter in English, translated and published by Hamas.
  Their 1988 Charter is far more violent and basically lays out plans for an Islamic State in the region.
  
  Thanks muchly
  
  Thank you my dude. These peeps are getting brainwashed by theocratic thugs. It's unreal how lefties are falling for this.
  
  Yes Israel paints them as Nazi Isis but it's more accurate to view them as the Viet Cong. They are fighting an anti colonial war.
  
  This is so dumb and reductive, though.
  First, that goal is like trying to drink the ocean. It's obviously impossible, so it's not useful as an indicator for what they'll agree to.
  Second, we hear this over and over, but the only citation is their founding document over thirty years ago. And in 2006 they went through a moderate rebrand, and then a lot of people in the org died, and Sinwar spent two decades in Israeli prison, so... that doesn't really tell us where they're at in this moment.
  Folks act like they're orcs. Just mindlessly evil. They're definitely completely ruthless, but the stuff they do isn't that different from what the IRA did, and they still made peace. So what does Sinwar want? Has anyone thought to ask?
  
  Try this reporting for motives of Sinwar. It's a good listen.
  https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/14/podcasts/the-daily/hamas-israel.html
  
  Thanks. I'm excited to hear it.
- Netanyahu: "We have creditable evidence that Hamas is experimenting with atomic weaponry. If nothing is done within 300 years, Hamas will have nukes!"
- This is such good news. Now the challenge is to keep both sides from reigniting.
  There was a ceasefire already in place prior to the 7th of October attacks
  
  There was a blockade of Gaza since 2007.
  
  Not necessarily. There were needed controls from Israeli side to ensure as little weapons get there as possible. That’s not blockade. That’s an attempt to prevent a terrorist organization to gain way too much power.
  
  Israel was blockading fucking food ports into Palestine. I'm sick of people trying to justify this extremist bullshit by painting every Palestinian as a terrorist. Yes it was a damn blockade. Stop fucking lying about it.
  And the only reason Israel started the blockade was Hamas getting elected, which Israel helped them to do in the first place.
  
  Not every palestinian is terrorist, I agree. So now let’s divide people into 2 categories: West bank inhabitants and Gaza inhabitants.
  Hamas in Gaza made the population so radical that both egypt and israel decided to close the borders. They (at least Egypt) would not do it if the population was not so radical.
  In the West Bank, people are less radical but still it’s not ideal.
  
  You know, instead of relitigating the crimes of both sides until we die, what if we just organize a new peace process already?
  It's been a fucking generation since anyone actually tried. And people always say, "Oh, ___ wont' agree to that!" Well, okay, prove it. Book the big room at Olive Garden and see if someone shows up.
  
  Obviously, it would be absolutely awesome to have a peace but firstly we need all the sides to agree on that. With Hamas present, neither Israelis/Palestinians will accept a deal.
  
  Both sides make that claim, and neither is going to sit down as long as they have a choice not to.
  Apartheid ended because the rest of the world left the people enforcing it with no means of retaining power. The same must be applied to Israel-Palestine.
  
  A ceasefire that doesn't involve lifting the blockade is meaningless because the blockade is already an act of war.
  
  They also assassinated their journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year so idk what type of ceasefire it is when only one side gets to murder the others (but they didn't drop any bombs so it's ok).
  
  And Hamas fired thousands of rockets at Israel during the ceasefire since 2007, is that also not an act of war?
  
  That's after the blockade, which is again an act of war.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Attacks_fired_at_Israel_from_the_Gaza_Strip_by_year.png
  
  The blockade was in response to the election of a known terrorist organization that was amassing weapons.
  But hey, if you think it's okay to try and murder Israeli civilians on the daily, why are you so mad at Israel killing Palestinian civilians? Seems pretty hypocritical of you.
  
  The blockade started 3 months before Hamas was elected so... yeah. Israel declared war on Gaza before Hamas was even elected.
  
  My mistake, but looking it up I also found out Palestine was firing rockets at Israel for years before the blockade:
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Attacks_fired_at_Israel_from_the_Gaza_Strip_by_year.png
  
  The thing is: Occupation is also an act of war, and Gaza (and the West Bank) have been occupied by Israel since 1970. You see the current state of the West Bank? This was also Gaza before 2005.
  
  As a result of the 1967 war of aggression by the PLO. Palestine lost a war and still had a government that mandated the destruction of Israel as their second charter. So they weren't exactly a friendly neighbor to Israel.
  
  You mean the election that the Israeli government helped Hamas win, then used as an excuse to punish Palestinians? You fucking pro-Israelis are the biggest liars on the planet.
  
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rocket_Attacks_fired_at_Israel_from_the_Gaza_Strip_by_year.png
  Rockets started well before the blockade it seems.
  
  A blockade is an act of war as defined by international law.
  
  What's your point? I don't see how this relates to either my statement that it is good news that hostages are being released or my statement that it will be a challenge to keep both sides from reigniting.

79 comments