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.
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.
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
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.