Good morning,
There are unconfirmed reports the U.S. has brokered a deal for a pause in fighting in Gaza, in which dozens of the roughly 237 hostages taken by Hamas Oct 7 could be released in exchange for aid deliveries.
The fighting would stop for 5 days, and both sides would hold fire during the period to allow the release of 50 hostages every 24 hours during which “a significant amount of humanitarian aid” would be delivered to people who have had to flee northern Gaza, and are short of food and water and critical medicine.
The pause in war, if true, would be a break through in getting some of the most vulnerable released which includes elderly and very young children, who were taken by terrorists from Kibbutzim in Hamas’ bloody attack on Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says there is still no deal to release some of the hostages although his denial doesn’t mean negotiations are not close to delivering an agreement.
Gaza’s most vulnerable need critical help too, and the numbers of dead and injured are staggering in scale, with at least 11 thousand killed, one third of them children.
This morning the UN is saying it’s al-Fakhoura School in Jabalya in Gaza used to shelter displaced Palestinians was hit by an explosion and many are dead and injured.
To say Israel is under intense pressure to stop bombing Gaza, would be a vast under statement. Israel’s claims for instance of a vast under ground network under Al Shifa’s hospital have been severely scrutinized by International Press, calling into questions even the IDF’s video evidence of weapons found inside the hospital.
I would note Israel’s storming of the hospital, while controversial, has to be based on human intelligence including dozens of interrogations of captured Hamas fighters, who I would think have supplied information to draw up detailed diagrams of command and control facilities under Al Shifa. Is the intelligence wrong? Highly doubtful but time will tell us.
Hamas and it’s supporters have flooded social media with jarring videos of the suffering of Palestinian people in Gaza, shaking European Capitols with major demonstrations against Israel.
In the propaganda war, Israel has lost round after round, and the fact Hamas launched this war, raping and savagely murdering more than 1200 Israeli’s is fading against the dark backdrop of daily pictures of Palestinians dying in Gaza.
The truth is we don’t see the pictures of Israeli captives held in dark tunnels by Hamas in Gaza undergoing torture and abuse and who knows what.
But it’s important to know they are there, and that includes Israeli teenagers, several dozen under 18 years old, another is a 3 year old toddler whose parents were killed. All held no doubt in extreme conditions, some of them wounded and suffering trauma, and the world needs to keep demanding their freedom from Hamas.
Hamas has a history of killing innocent people, and the notion they would give up hostages after just 42 days is doubtful.
Any nation would launch an armed attack to free it’s citizens butchered at a music festival, kidnapped from ‘safe rooms’ in their homes, and hauled back into Gaza by a terrorist organization.
You would demand nothing less from your Government if such an attack had occurred in your country.
Israel’s war has to be more exact, and as it continues, which no doubt it will, the numbers of civilian casualties must be lower.
But if the goal posts don’t move and Israel remains committed to removing Hamas entirely from Gaza, the conflict will be long, running months, and dare I say several years with no clear end or vision of what the end of Hamas would look like in Gaza.
But now that this war has begun, many believe Israel must not stop until every rocket launcher is destroyed, every tunnel is sealed, and every hostage is brought home.