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.

  • Andy
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    10 months ago

    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.

    • hydro033
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      2410 months ago

      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?

      • PugJesus
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        1210 months ago

        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.

        • Alto
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          710 months ago

          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.

          • PugJesus
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            610 months ago

            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.

            • @[email protected]
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              610 months ago

              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.

            • @[email protected]
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              510 months ago

              Rebuild all of their terror infrastructure and plan the next murder/rape/kidnapping of Israeli citizens.

      • Alto
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        710 months ago

        There’s a handful of people that really don’t want to acknowledge that

      • @hassanmckusickA
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        510 months ago

        I read the 2017 charter where Hamas says they will accept a 2 state solution

        • @[email protected]
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          2110 months ago

          Do you mean this part:

          1. 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:

          1. 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:

          1. 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:

          1. 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.

          • Andy
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            310 months ago

            Can you share a link? I’ve been looking for source documents like this.

          • hydro033
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            210 months ago

            Thank you my dude. These peeps are getting brainwashed by theocratic thugs. It’s unreal how lefties are falling for this.

        • @[email protected]
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          -210 months ago

          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.

      • Andy
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        10 months ago

        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?

    • @[email protected]
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      1210 months ago

      Netanyahu: “We have creditable evidence that Hamas is experimenting with atomic weaponry. If nothing is done within 300 years, Hamas will have nukes!”

    • Hatsune Miku
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      310 months ago

      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