Hey, getting having a casus belli that can be passed around to buy you time to bomb a city long enough before someone intervenes, especially if you can't singlehandedly deter many of the other armies to leave you alone, is a rare opportunity for small fish warmongers.
An act or event that provokes or is used to justify war.
A matter or occasion of war; an excuse or a reason for declaring war: as, the right of search claimed by Great Britain constituted a casus belli in 1812.
An act seen as justifying or causing a war.
(The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition)
In Bibi's eyes, every day that Hamas continues to exist is a good day. If Hamas ever ceases to exist, Israelis might go back to questioning his corruption charges.
Hamas has stated they will repeat attacks like Oct 7th until all Israel is wiped out, and you think they will honour a ceasefire and actually accept peace?
Hamas only wants a ceasefire so they can regroup and rearm before attacking Israel again.
He'll rather kill them all with his own hands rather than stop the war. The moment genocide is over he's next in line to get fucked.
So long hostages. This is what you get for electing sociopaths I guess.
There were talks about up to 15 hostages, of 239 in demand for 4 days of ceasefire. Hamas needs this ceasefire desperately to regroup and assess the damages. The chaos now serves Israel well and apparently it puts much more pressure on Hamas. The ground invasion proves very effective. Maybe as Hamas becomes more desperate the "price" for the hostages will drop. Alternatively, if Israel will allow them to regroup, the war will take significantly more time because it will be much harder to eradicate them. Maybe the Israelis know where the hostages are held and after a ceasefire the hostages will be transferred to a different hideout, or smuggled via the tunnels to Egypt and from there to who knows where.
Neutral and Israel alligned countries have been calling for a humanatarian pause on purely humanitarian grounds. Even if you don't care about the hostages, that Hamas was willing to offer them means that they had an interest in such a pause as well; making Israel the only obstacle to it happening. That is to say, the severity of the humanitarian disaster in Gaza is squarly on Israel's shoulders. The most charitable reading of the situation is that they have determined that the tactical advantage of blocking a humanitarian pause outways the civilian lives they put at risk by doing so.
Of course he doesn't want to de-escalate the situation.
If he did that, things might calm down and fewer people will vote based on his promises of being strong on security. Also if he did that, his hard-right backers (who need a hot conflict to keep taking Palestinian land politically acceptable) will attack him for being 'soft' on security.
The logic of it all is genocide of course, but Bibi wants that if the alternative is him being out of office and back in court defending himself against corruption charges.
Which is a very important distinction that people here seem to overlook. If you give in to a terrorist's and hostage taker's demands you're inviting more terrorism and hostage-taking because it worked.
I think Netanyahu has a similar look about his eyes as Putin? It's like they're monsters inside and are communicating how little empathy and concerns for others they have inside, almost as a warning. Anyone else feel the same thing?
One source with knowledge of the talks, which slowed after the Israeli ground invasion, said a central point of discussion was a demand by the Israeli side for Hamas to provide a full list specifying the name and details of each person held in Gaza. The Israeli side was unwilling to cease bombardments without receiving this list.
Hamas responded that it was unable to provide the list without a pause in the fighting, as the estimated 240 hostages were held by a number of different groups in places across Gaza. That suggested even Hamas leaders do not know for sure how many people are held captive, their locations or the number who have survived the bombardments.
Another source said Hamas originally demanded prisoner exchanges, fuel and other supplies in return for the hostages, but these demands were dropped in favour of a halt to the airstrikes alone.
“Each time the Israeli counter-demand got harder,” the source said. Members of Hamas have previously said they took hostages in order to exchange them for the thousands of Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
...
Sources briefed on the talks told Reuters that the group discussed allowing small amounts of fuel into Gaza for humanitarian purposes, which Israel has so far refused, as well as the deal to free a small number of hostages in exchange for a ceasefire of one or two days. The outcome of the talks, however, remained unclear.
It sounds like these sources may be members of Hamas' negotiating team, which I don't exactly know that that's a reliable source.
It doesnt sound like complete BS that Hamas probably doesnt know the exact number, names and placement of hostages at the moment. They probably have a good idea but no definite list.
When Putin was invading Ukraine everyone was calling for the Russians to just kill Putin. When Hamas invaded everyone was calling for the Palestinians to kill Hamas themselves.
Awfully silent these days though now israel is the party committing war crimes.
Telling Palestinians to kill Hamas leaders is useless because the top Hamas leaders are actually living abroad, unlike Putin who stay cooped in Russia.
You're right I should have clarified. European and Americans which have always yelled that violence against politicians is never justified did a 180 on their morals when they didn't like someone.
Globally, we're going to need to develop approaches for de-radicalizing large groups of people. Even if we can start on the direction towards peace in this situation, both the Israeli and some segments of Palestinian people seem radicalized to the point of no return, where no true solutions is even possible. I see the same thing in the US with whatever tf you want to call the Republican party. They're over the cliff. No pulling them back. Yet we need a way to de-radicalize these people otherwise there is no path forward.
You dont have to leave Israel and palestine to find more groups. Have you seen what kinds of people bibi is courting to stay in power? Ultra-orthodox far right netters who are publically asking for a cleansed ethno-state.
Considering it wasn't a return of all of the hostages and additionally Hamas said they intend to repeat the terrorist attack that sparked this, what motivation does Netanyahu have to stop until Hamas is destroyed?
What motivation do Hamas have to just take the current occupation of Gaza and living in such a way? Genuinely curious.
Less lives lost, even in the long term. We won't know what would have been, but there may well have been a diplomatic solution that got Gazan independence. But Hamas is built on violence is the answer.
Benjamin Netanyahu rejected a deal for a five-day ceasefire with Palestinian militant groups in Gaza in return for the release of some of the hostages held in the territory early in the war, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
Negotiations resumed after the launch of the Israeli ground offensive on 27 October, but the same sources said Netanyahu had continued to take a tough line on proposals involving ceasefires of different durations in exchange for a varying number of hostages.
An estimated 240 people were taken hostage after fighters from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other groups based in Gaza, as well as civilians, crossed the reinforced border fence separating the territory from Israeli towns and kibbutzim.
According to three sources familiar with the talks, the original deal on the table involved freeing children, women and elderly and sick people in exchange for a five-day ceasefire, but the Israeli government turned this down and demonstrated its rejection with the launch of the ground offensive.
On Thursday the US national security council spokesperson John Kirby said Israel had agreed to daily four-hour “humanitarian pauses”, with the aim that the small breaks in bombardments could aid the passage of hostages out of Gaza.
In mid-October, the former Mossad operative David Meidan, who negotiated the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Gaza over a decade ago, told Haaretz: “There’s no doubt that the first issue the state has to deal with is the matter of the captives … The window of opportunity for this is very narrow.
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