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OT: World Politics

Montana said:
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The IDF refers to this as door knocking... which is in response to rockets fired from Gaza. It's not designed to do damage. It's designed to notify civilians to get out of the building because it's coming down.

From what I understood, that building came down roughly 10 minutes later.

 


Former Peace Negotiator who has been in contact with members of Hamas.


- Hamas know their end is coming, individually and as an organization & plan to fight to the death.

- they’re blocking people from getting to the Egypt border.

- he broached the idea of releasing hostages, to save their dignity and humanity…release women, children, elderly, sick/injured…..Hamas refused unless their prisoners are released. (Also have to think they view the hostages are some level of protection, knowing Israel will be trying their best to get them out alive.)

- he doesn’t believe everything that occurred was part of the plan going in, but all the brutality that occurred falls on their heads & obviously they can’t continue to govern.
 
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Random thing I hadn’t read yet, but I’m sure others have…..~1,500 Hamas members were killed in Israel after the initial attack. Only ~500 made it back, including those with the hostages obviously.

Hadn’t realized the death toll was that high, but great to know so many of them are already neutralized before firing a single shot in Gaza.
 
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zeke said:
That's the most useful interview i've seen anywhere.
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found one with him from yesterday with NPR….another quality one providing details about the hostages, possible operations, and insight from each side he’s spoken to.

Infuriating to hear Hamas was offered a possible swap of female prisoners, for the release of some of their hostages…..and they turned it down, believing they could get more.

(audio click available here, ~4 mins)

LEILA FADEL, HOST:

It's thought that Hamas is holding roughly 150 hostages after last weekend's attack on Israel. They include women, children and the elderly.

GERSHON BASKIN: I have at least one personal friend who is a hostage. One of my close friends has 12 relatives who were taken and are hostages.

FADEL: That's Gershon Baskin. He is a former hostage negotiator who helped secure the release of an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, after he was captured by the militants in 2006. And Baskin says he's ready to step in again. But for some, it may be too late. This morning, Hamas announced that 13 hostages were killed in the retaliatory airstrikes on Gaza in the last 24 hours. That statement came after I spoke to Baskin, who predicted that getting all the hostages out alive would be nearly impossible.

BASKIN: There's a very small chance that all the hostages will be returned alive. We can assume that Hamas has disperse them around the Gaza Strip in small groups. I don't know how it's possible to keep that large number of hostages secret. Intelligence information will leak out. There are 2.213 million people living in Gaza in a very small area. And there are people there who will give information to the Israelis. And Israel will send in its special forces now, and in the coming days or a week, there will be a major ground assault into the Gaza Strip, sweeping across Gaza and hoping to do military operations to find and rescue the hostages. In that situation, I think it's easy to assume that many of the hostages will be killed.

FADEL: Are there any hostage negotiations at all that are going on, or is the plan to go in and get them?

BASKIN: There are no negotiations going on at the official level. Israel refuses to negotiate. Israel has only on its mind the military operation of wiping out Hamas, even if it means reoccupying Gaza. Hamas' point of view, and this has been told to me by two senior Hamas people, is that they will not negotiate until there's a full cessation of what they call Israeli aggression against Gaza. There are three countries with limited influence over Hamas. That's Turkey, Qatar and Egypt. And all three of them are involved in trying to persuade Hamas to at least release women and children, perhaps even in exchange for women prisoners in Israeli prison and children.

Hamas people have told me that their goal is to free all the Hamas prisoners. They believe that they still have cards in their hands. If there are three international leverage points on Hamas - Turkey, Qatar and Egypt - Hamas has 150 or 200 leverage points on Israel, and they are hoping to use those points of leverage to force Israel to make a deal to release the Palestinian prisoners.

FADEL: You know, we've been speaking to Palestinians - civilians - inside Gaza. More than half of the people who have been killed have been women and children, or some half of that, families killed. I mean, what guarantee is there that the hostages aren't being killed in these same bombardments?

BASKIN: There is no guarantee. And Israel, I assume, takes that into account. The same thing happened during the five years and four months that Gilad Shalit was in Gaza. There were several times when there were massive bombing campaigns, and I was personally concerned that maybe they were going to kill Gilad Shalit. I can tell you that during the times when I was doing negotiations, I was in Gaza twice in the Prime Minister's office in Gaza City, and I was more afraid of being bombed by Israel during that time that I was there than being attacked by the people who I was negotiating with.

I feel terrible for the civilian population. They're innocent. They are victims of this conflict, most of them. I think what needs to happen is there needs to be pressure on Egypt to open up the Rafah border to enable Gazans who can leave, who want to leave to be able to exit the war zone for at least the period of the war. Egypt has refused to do that. This is unacceptable.

FADEL: But also, that crossing has been struck three times.

BASKIN: Right. But I think that if there - it was opened for the Palestinians to exit for the period of the war, that the bombing of that exit would be stopped. Israel would allow that to happen. Israel is not interested in killing civilians, although it's obviously a part of what happens when you do massive bombings of Palestinian towns and cities and refugee camps. But it's not in the interest of Israel to kill civilians, and I think that Israel would facilitate the exit of whoever wanted to leave through that border.
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Northern Ireland and South Africa… everyone knows they offer templates or at least some kind of lens to explore a path to reconciliation, but it’s been going in reverse.

The rapprochement of Israel and the Gulf states without meaningfully addressing the Palestinian cause was foolish and naive. Thanks Kushner, Bibi and MBZ. Amateurs and grifters.

And Hamas needs to fucken go.
 
lecoqsportif said:
It’s the nihilism of the zero sum mentality. It’s brutal.
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This article from Gershon discusses him having negotiated the release of Israeli soldier Galid Shalit in 2011 who had been held captive for 5+ years….but they got 1,000 prisoners in return for him.

so just from that angle I can see how they now mistakenly believe the hostages they have now “should” get them the 5k+ prisoners they want released…..but it’s obviously such a gross miscalculation of the situation given what they did, destroying any interest Israeli would have in any sort of swap resembling those made in the past.

just realizing now that his mention of the potential swap was being suggested to Hamas by officials in Turkey/Qatar/Egypt, so it’s not likely to have been feasible anyway…..still tho, the fact they’d reject such an idea, shows they’re either oblivious to how far gone any idea of swap negotiations are, or they just feel at this point their value as human shields is too high.

The below is a more in-depth article about everything written by Gershon himself a couple days ago…

www.thenationalnews.com

I once helped free an Israeli hostage from Hamas, and I know this time it's different | The National

Negotiations rely on trust, and that will be in short supply after everything that's happened
www.thenationalnews.com www.thenationalnews.com
 
lecoqsportif said:
Northern Ireland and South Africa… everyone knows they offer templates or at least some kind of lens to explore a path to reconciliation, but it’s been going in reverse.

The rapprochement of Israel and the Gulf states without meaningfully addressing the Palestinian cause was foolish and naive. Thanks Kushner, Bibi and MBZ. Amateurs and grifters.

And Hamas needs to fucken go.
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yeah, feels like the only hope for peace down the line starts and ends with wiping Hamas off the map first, and then having a Palestinian government willing to work with Shin Bet on the intelligence front, to stamp out any other terror organizations/cells that try to pop up, domestically.

I forget which former head of Shin Bet it was, but he said their most successful time was when they were working with Palestinian officials who shared intelligence and were eyes and ears on the ground for them in Gaza.
 
Montana said:
This article from Gershon discusses him having negotiated the release of Israeli soldier Galid Shalit in 2011 who had been held captive for 5+ years….but they got 1,000 prisoners in return for him.

so just from that angle I can see how they now mistakenly believe the hostages they have now “should” get them the 5k+ prisoners they want released…..but it’s obviously such a gross miscalculation of the situation given what they did, destroying any interest Israeli would have in any sort of swap resembling those made in the past.

just realizing now that his mention of the potential swap was being suggested to Hamas by officials in Turkey/Qatar/Egypt, so it’s not likely to have been feasible anyway…..still tho, the fact they’d reject such an idea, shows they’re either oblivious to how far gone any idea of swap negotiations are, or they just feel at this point their value as human shields is too high.

The below is a more in-depth article about everything written by Gershon himself a couple days ago…

www.thenationalnews.com

I once helped free an Israeli hostage from Hamas, and I know this time it's different | The National

Negotiations rely on trust, and that will be in short supply after everything that's happened
www.thenationalnews.com www.thenationalnews.com
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Also worth noting that some of the prisoners released in exchange for Shalit were responsible for planning and leading the recent massacre
 
Wayward DP said:
@Montana
There was one in particular who Israel killed overnight who I believe led one of the units that terrorized a kibbutz? Will see if I can find the article.
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Link
The IDF said Ali Qadhi, a company commander in the so-called Nukhba commando unit who led one of the assaults on October 7, was killed in a drone strike following intelligence efforts by the Shin Bet security agency and Military Intelligence Directorate.

Qadhi was arrested by Israel in 2005 over the kidnapping and murder of Israeli businessman Sasson Nuriel and had been released to the Gaza Strip as part of the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.
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They should swap all Hamas prisoners jailed in Israel and then bomb the shit out of all them immediately after. They are all doomed anyway.
 
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