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.

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[–] 50 points 2 years ago* (49 children)

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.

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  • [–] 24 points 2 years ago (25 children)

    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?

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  • [–] 12 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (6 children)

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

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  • [–] 21 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (21 children)

    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

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (11 children)

    A ceasefire that doesn't involve lifting the blockade is meaningless because the blockade is already an act of war.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago* (10 children)

    They also assassinated their journalist Shireen Abu Akleh last year so idk what type of ceasefire it is when only one side gets to murder the others (but they didn't drop any bombs so it's ok).

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    What's your point? I don't see how this relates to either my statement that it is good news that hostages are being released or my statement that it will be a challenge to keep both sides from reigniting.

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  • [–] [S] 31 points 2 years ago* (14 children)

    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

    About MediaBiasFactCheck.com

    Methodology

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (12 children)

    Their hostages vs our prisoners (that we hold without trial or accusation)

    No bias detected.

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  • [–] [S] 18 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

    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”

    archive.org link

    archive.is link

    “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?

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Hard to say with translations, a lot is up to the translator.

    *In response to your edit, I thought you were referring to what does Hamas call their people being held by Israel. What Hamas calls their hostages seems less relevant to me.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago

    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.

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  • [–] 14 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Dang, finally, 50 is still small amount but hopefully this lead to more. More importantly is the flow of humanitarian aid

    Israeli media said the first release of hostages was expected on Thursday. Implementing the deal must wait for 24 hours to give Israeli citizens the chance to ask the Supreme Court to block the release of Palestinian prisoners, reports said.

    Wouldn't that break the truce??

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    Presumably there are "alternates" if there are objections to a specific person being released. One of the conditions is that no one who was convicted of murder will be released, so it may include someone who only gravely injured someone, rather than actually killed someone.

    If you can find the list you can search each name. There well likely be some news articles about each one.

    EDIT:

    The full list (in Hebrew) is here: https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/DynamicCollectors/is-db

    Israeli press is already raising some objections to those who were being held for attempted murder - including one woman who repeatedly stabbed a mother in front of her kids.

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