2y ago

Israel, Hamas agree deal for release of Gaza hostages, truce

www.reuters.com Israel, Hamas agree deal for release of Gaza hostages, truce

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.

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.

World News @beehaw.org

Israel, Hamas agree on four-day truce, hostage release and aid into Gaza

www.reuters.com /world/middle-east/israeli-government-debates-deal-release-gaza-hostages-truce-2023-11-21/

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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.
- 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 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.
  
  There's a handful of people that really don't want to acknowledge that
  
  I read the 2017 charter where Hamas says they will accept a 2 state solution
  
  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?
- Netanyahu: "We have creditable evidence that Hamas is experimenting with atomic weaponry. If nothing is done within 300 years, Hamas will have nukes!"
- 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 ceasefire that doesn't involve lifting the blockade is meaningless because the blockade is already an act of war.
  
  A blockade is an act of war as defined by international law.
  
  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.

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
- Their hostages vs our prisoners (that we hold without trial or accusation)
  No bias detected.
  
  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?
  
  https://www.gov.il/he/Departments/DynamicCollectors/is-db?skip=0 plenty tried and accused.
  
  Terrorists have hostages. Countries have political prisoners and prisoners of war.
- 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.

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??
- 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.

Oh wow, big news! Yay peace!
- There will be no peace.
  Once Israel recovers the hostages or confirms their death, Gaza becomes a parking lot.
  
  Israel could have made Gaza a parking lot well before any hostages were taken if that's what they wanted to do.

And Israel is going to release all of the Palestinian hostage they're holding? Or just 200?

This is the best summary I could come up with:
Ahead of the announcement of the deal, Netanyahu said the intervention of U.S. President Joe Biden had helped to improve the tentative agreement so that it included more hostages and fewer concessions.
In addition to Israeli citizens, more than half the hostages held foreign and dual citizenship from some 40 countries including the U.S., Thailand, Britain, France, Argentina, Germany, Chile, Spain and Portugal, Israel's government has said.
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.
Qatar's chief negotiator in ceasefire talks, Minister of State at the Foreign Ministry Mohammed Al-Khulaifi, told Reuters that the International Committee of the Red Cross would be working inside Gaza to facilitate the hostages' release.
The armed wing of the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad, which participated in the Oct. 7 raid with Hamas, said late on Tuesday that one of the Israeli hostages it has held since the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel had died.
"We previously expressed our willingness to release her for humanitarian reasons, but the enemy was stalling and this led to her death," Al Quds Brigades said on its Telegram channel.
The original article contains 980 words, the summary contains 201 words. Saved 79%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
- I think this bot is broken. This isn’t the article linked.
  Edit: On second look this is the article, just a terrible summary missing pretty much everything important.
  
  It is, just badly bastardised.
  
  Worked for me. Try again maybe?

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