Hamas armed wing says it discussed freeing 70 hostages in return for 5-day truce

MicroWave@lemmy.world to World News@lemmy.world – 90 points – Hamas armed wing says it discussed freeing 70 hostages in return for 5-day truce
reuters.com

The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas said on Monday it told Qatari mediators the group was ready to release up to 70 women and children held in Gaza in return for a five-day truce with Israel.

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Headline is wrong. The article makes it clear that it’s in exchange for prisoners in Israeli jails PLUS a truce.

Last week there was an effort from the Qatari brothers to release the enemy captives from women and children, in return for the release of 200 Palestinian children and 75 women detained by the enemy" Abu Ubaida, the spokesman for the armed wing of Hamas, al-Qassam Brigades, said in an audio recording posted on the group's Telegram channel.

"The truce should include a complete ceasefire and allow aid and humanitarian relief everywhere in the Gaza Strip," he said.

tbf, Israel releasing mammoth numbers of their prisoners for small numbers of their own citizens is pretty standard, and would probably be assumed by anyone well familiar with the history of the conflict.

Israel's clearly taking this war in a different direction from usual, unfortunately — based on what they're saying at least, it seems the intent is to eradicate Hamas and deal with the consequences later

I think we need to focus in on the guy on top. Average Israelis are pretty normal people, and normal people just want to live.

Netanyahu, however, has a very small number of possible routes that don't end with him personally having his own life destroyed, alongside his current nutjob buddies. Most likely, though, his days are numbered. He's a political dead man, and given how common assassination is, he might be a literal one too. Few years, at best.

According to a recent poll, around 75% of Israelis want him to resign immediately or at the end of the war.

That's really, really bad. He's (rightfully) getting almost all the blame for this fiasco of historical proportions.

I mean, this could potentially spiral into Napoleon-attacking-Russia levels of "oops, I guess I fucked up..."

Netanyahu is fucked, probably... but it is worth noting that he has gotten out of shit like this before. And a lot of Israel supports this war, while also hating Netanyahu — hence "end of the war".

https://time.com/6333781/israel-hamas-poll-palestine/ According to this article from earlier last week, "57.5% of Israeli Jews said that they believed the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) were using too little firepower in Gaza, 36.6% said the IDF was using an appropriate amount of firepower".

In my opinion, that's something that is even more significant than the fact that as long as the war continues, Netanyahu will be in power unless he gets assassinated (which, given the region's history, is certainly possible to be fair, but usually comes from the right). Sure, replace him. Gantz will still pursue this war, Ben Gvir would probably nuke Gaza if he could help it, and a lot of MKs would still want something like this. Hell, even Lapid says there can't be Hamas in Gaza after this. Every politician (except probably from Labour / Israeli Arab parties) will support this war, because the people demand it.

Calling for the complete destruction of your enemy after suffering a surprise military attack is pretty common, I would have expected no other possible reaction, from any administration anywhere in the world. Except maybe the Dalai Llama or something.

The key is it doesn't last. It's biological in nature, and that neurological damage suffered as a result of the intense trauma slowly heals on its own. Rationality re-asserts itself, and you start looking for actually pragmatic solutions again, instead of emotional reactions.

As we can all see with our better objectivity from so far away, their current course of action is not an actually practical, pragmatic solution. Instead it is likely to make things worse. They will, one-by-one, slowly heal enough until this realization begins to become apparent.

Where they are currently unable to see it. In many cases, anyway.

edit: We have a term for the feeling, incidentally. It's called cold fury. I think we've probably all seen it for ourselves, or maybe even felt it before. Don't fall for the "I'm perfectly calm" line though. It's a lie, and they're just lying to themselves first.

“Anyone well familiar with the history of the conflict” doesn’t describe the vast majority of opinions I’ve found on the internet so I felt it was important to clarify since the headline is misleading at best.

Secondly, I think the calculus has changed. Netanyahu used to have no problem propping up Hamas. So, sure, trade Yahya Sinwar and a thousand other prisoners for Gilad Shalit. In Netanyahu’s mind, that will only help destabilize the PA and allow him to keep building settlements in the West Bank. That strategy came home to roost on October 7.

Thank you for the further clarification. I'll need to learn more about the current situation. I was aware of the cash he was giving to HAMAS, but I do not know enough about the interior affairs of domestic Palestinian politics to understand the deeper ramifications of these moves.

It makes sense if you look at the death toll.

Israeli lives are just worth more than Palestinian's.

If the mods were consistent they would have removed OP's post as per Rule 3.