Fogbow

Hamas responds to Israel plan with three-stage proposal to end Gaza war
Israel almost certain to reject idea to exchange hostages for prisoners, reconstruct Gaza and withdraw Israeli troops

Bethan McKernan in Jerusalem
Wed 7 Feb 2024 12.43 CET

Hamas has responded to a US-backed Israeli ceasefire plan for the war in Gaza with its own far-reaching proposal for a permanent end to the fighting.

It is a position Israel is almost certain to reject, but which mediators are viewing positively, as it appears the group is willing to engage in further negotiations.

Hamas put forward its three-stage plan late on Tuesday via Qatari and Egyptian mediators. Under the plan, Palestinian militants would exchange Israeli hostages they captured on 7 October for 1,500 Palestinian prisoners, secure the reconstruction of Gaza, ensure the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces and an exchange of bodies and remains, according to a draft document seen by Reuters.

The proposal envisions three phases of a truce, of 45 days each. It comes in response to a plan put forward by Israel two weeks ago for a six-week cessation of hostilities and the phased release of the estimated 130 Israelis still held hostage in Gaza in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.

In the Hamas plan, all female Israeli hostages, males under 19, and elderly and sick people would be released during the first 45-day phase, in exchange for Palestinian women and children from Israeli jails. The remaining male hostages would be released during the second phase, and bodies exchanged in the third phase. By the end of the third phase, Hamas would expect the sides to have reached agreement on an end to the war.




https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... d-gaza-war

President Joe Biden announced Friday that the U.S. will drop food aid into the Gaza Strip, noting that the humanitarian aid flowing into the region for Palestinians is insufficient.

“Aid flowing into Gaza is nowhere nearly enough… lives are on the line,” Biden said as he announced the decision about the airdrops during an Oval Office meeting he was holding with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

“We should be getting hundreds of trucks in, not just several,” he continued. “We’re going to pull out every stop we can.”

The president reiterated that the U.S. is trying to push for an immediate cease-fire between Hamas and Israel to allow more aid into Gaza, where he said “innocent people” have died.

Volkonski wrote: ↑Fri Mar 01, 2024 3:16 pm Biden announces U.S. will airdrop food aid into Gaza as famine concerns grow
The president reiterated that the U.S. is trying to push for an immediate cease-fire between Hamas and Israel in order to allow more aid into Gaza.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white- ... rcna141436



So what will happen if someone shoots down one of those American planes?

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Mon Mar 04, 2024 7:27 pm Or in other words: Israels army has been successful in disrupting the Hamas tunnel system and isolating an unknown number of remaining fractions. Of which many may have expired by being cut off from supplies and air themselves. The last couple of weeks I have been wondering how some delegates in Egypt may have enough information to speak for the former Hamas leadership.

What is the real Hamas?
How Israeli, Palestinian and US political actors understand Hamas is not merely a theoretical question – it will determine what kind of agreement can be reached to end the current war, and what the future of Gaza will look like

by Joshua Leifer
Thu 21 Mar 2024 06.00 CET

In late October 2023, the veteran Israeli peace activist Gershon Baskin published an open letter denouncing a man he had long called a friend – Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas official. Baskin, an architect of the deal that freed the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011, is one of the only Israeli citizens who has maintained consistent contact with leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement. Hamad, a former journalist with a degree in veterinary medicine, was also involved in the Shalit negotiations and served as deputy foreign minister in the 2012 Hamas government. Prior to the 7 October attacks, for more than a decade and a half, Hamad and Baskin had exchanged frequent phone calls and text messages. These mainly concerned negotiations around prisoner swap deals, and sometimes the possibility of a long-term truce between Israel and Hamas. The pair developed a warm working relationship based on mutual trust.

After 7 October and the start of Israel’s ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, that relationship started to unravel. Hamad insisted that the attacks were entirely justified, and denied that Hamas fighters had carried out atrocities during their incursion into Israel. On 24 October, in an interview for a Lebanese TV channel, Hamad vowed that Hamas would commit the same acts “again and again”. He said that “Al-Aqsa Flood”, Hamas’s name for its armed offensive, “is just the first time, and there will be a second, a third, a fourth”. Once considered a thoughtful observer of Palestinian politics, Hamad now declared that “nobody should blame us for what we do – on 7 October, on 10 October, on October 1,000,000. Everything we do is justified.”



continued at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/ ... real-hamas

Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres wrote: Today @WCKitchen lost several of our sisters and brothers in an IDF air strike in Gaza. I am heartbroken and grieving for their families and friends and our whole WCK family. These are people…angels…I served alongside in Ukraine, Gaza, Turkey, Morocco, Bahamas, Indonesia. They are not faceless…they are not nameless. The Israeli government needs to stop this indiscriminate killing. It needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon. No more innocent lives lost. Peace starts with our shared humanity. It needs to start now.

World Central Kitchen @WCKitchen wrote: We are aware of reports that members of the World Central Kitchen team have been killed in an IDF attack while working to support our humanitarian food delivery efforts in Gaza. This is a tragedy. Humanitarian aid workers and civilians should NEVER be a target. EVER.

Following this report, "the IDF began an in-depth investigation, to understand the circumstances of the incident," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said.

The announcement also stated that "the IDF is making great efforts to enable the safe passage of humanitarian aid, and is working in full cooperation and coordination with the WCK organization to support their efforts to provide food and humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip."

raison de arizona wrote: ↑Mon Apr 01, 2024 10:56 pm The IDF has been working with WCK.

Following this report, "the IDF began an in-depth investigation, to understand the circumstances of the incident," the IDF Spokesperson's Unit said.

The announcement also stated that "the IDF is making great efforts to enable the safe passage of humanitarian aid, and is working in full cooperation and coordination with the WCK organization to support their efforts to provide food and humanitarian aid to the residents of the Gaza Strip."

19m ago 16.54 CEST

Here is the video clip of Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying “this happens in wartime” after Israel’s military admitted it had killed seven aid workers, including three British citizens, in an airstrike on an aid convoy in Gaza.


https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/ ... estigation

Mistakes happen in war, but it’s hard to call 3 strikes happening over multiple kilometers—particularly after WCK disclosed their movements to the Israeli military prior to departure—a “tragic accident”

This was either a massive breakdown in communication, or it was intentional.

Kaitlan Collins @kaitlancollins wrote: President Biden on the strike that killed WCK aid workers: "This is a major reason why distributing humanitarian aid in Gaza has been so difficult – because Israel has not done enough to protect aid workers trying to deliver desperately needed help to civilians. Incidents like yesterday’s simply should not happen. Israel has also not done enough to protect civilians. The United States has repeatedly urged Israel to deconflict their military operations against Hamas with humanitarian operations, in order to avoid civilian casualties."

RTH10260 wrote: ↑Thu Apr 04, 2024 12:46 am ...The guy himself is also an active member of IDF, but he never revealed his actual duties. My guess is that he acts as a kind of imbedded war reporter on behalf of the IDF and receives direct information from them.