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.
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.
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.
A blockade is an act of war as defined by international law.
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 read the 2017 charter where Hamas says they will accept a 2 state solution
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.
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.
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
Reuters – Bias and Credibility
Bias Rating: Least Biased
Factual Reporting: Very High
Country: United Kingdom
MBFC’s Country Freedom Rank: Mostly Free
Media Type: News Agency
Traffic/Popularity: High Traffic
MBFC Credibility Rating: High Credibility
Their hostages vs our prisoners (that we hold without trial or accusation)
No bias detected.
https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/DynamicCollectors/is-db?skip=0 plenty tried and accused.
Which ones are the 150 women and children to be released from Israeli jail?
Which ones are the 150 women children to be released from Israeli jail?
Edit: Confirmed that hostage is the terminology used by Hamas to describe their Israeli captives.
“Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades Military Wing of Hamas MovementMilitary Information Department”
“Therefore, we declare that any targeting of our defenceless civilians’ homes without prior warnings will be met with the execution of an Israeli civilian hostage in our custody, and this event will be broadcast publicly“
Original comment: Maybe I’m just confused, but doesn’t Hamas themselves use the same terminology?
I’m not saying Hamas is not holding hostages, I’m saying a lot of Israeli prisoners are hostages.
The concept of evaluating media for bias and conflating that with factuality is, frankly, terrifying. A site’s political views is not necessarily representative of its factuality, but Media Bias Fact Check consistently penalizes sites that have “never failed a fact check” because they are not considered to be “least biased.”
These sites bite off more than they can chew. They’re extremely US-Western-centric (mostly because the authors of these sites tend to be American and thus have their own set of American biases) - claiming that America is somehow the paragon of journalistic freedoms and free speech is, in itself, an American bias. CBC, which hasn’t failed a fact check, is only a “high” on the factual reporting scale, for example. Meanwhile Reuters, for which I can point to multiple instances where they got key details wrong, gets a “very high” for factual reporting.
