Hamas says no hostage will leave alive unless group's demands met
Hamas has warned that not a single hostage would leave the territory “alive” unless the group’s demands were met.
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Well for an actual "list of demands" I would expect things like "release these people:" followed by a list of names, and "stop doing these violations:" followed by a list of the violations they are accusing Israel of. "Release everybody" and "stop doing bad things" are technically demands, but they're not the kind of things you'd expect in an actual list of specific demands. Those certainly work as summaries of the demands, but I was hoping that some news agency would have an actual list of the specific things Hamas is demanding in order to release the hostages rather than just "do everything we want." I've seen them mention the drones in another article, which I suspect must be one of the things on the actual list.
"Release everyone" is one of their actual demands. Usually Hamas milks hostages for as many Palestinian prisoners as they're worth, and this time they have a lot of hostages so it should be in line with historical "exchange rates", so to speak, given that many of the hostages are soldiers, which have more value as hostages. Good point on the violations thing, though, it's frankly perplexing that they nobody is publishing an actual list.
If something as vague as "release everyone" or "release all Palestinians in Israeli jails" or whatever is one of their actual demands, it's unfortunate, because it makes it sound more like they're not serious and are just making impossible demands that they know will not/can not be met as an excuse to continue fighting but to give off the appearance of working for peace. Just as if "the eradication of the Israeli state" were one of their demands. But I can't really accuse them of that yet since I haven't seen an actual list of demands and we're both just speculating at this stage.
because it makes it sound more like they're not serious and are just making impossible demands that they know will not/can not be met as an excuse to continue fighting but to give off the appearance of working for peace.
Why not? I think they got Israel to release 1200 Palestinian prisoners for one soldier before. That's why I said there's historical precedent. Releasing all Palestinian prisoners is far from an impossible demand.
It's the vagueness that's the problem. Without lists of who is to be released, it just becomes Israel's word of who is there or not. It could be 100 people or 10,000 people. I suspect Hamas is far more aware of who is imprisoned and how much they are worth. Like, is Hamas demanding the release of random violent criminals, rapists, car thieves, etc. solely because of their ethnicity? I doubt it. But they'll want their fighters back, and any political prisoners, stuff like that.
Yeah makes sense.
And one of those released went on to mastermind the Oct 7 atrocities.