President Biden plans to dispatch CIA Director William J. Burns in the coming days to help broker an ambitious deal between Hamas and Israel that would involve the release of all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the longest cessation of hostilities since the war began last year, according to officials familiar with the matter.
Burns is expected to travel to Europe for the talks and meet with the Israeli and Egyptian intelligence chiefs, David Barnea and Abbas Kamel, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. The planned gathering has not been previously reported.
Egypt and Qatar have been key interlocutors between Israel and Hamas, the militant group whose deadly cross-border attack on Oct. 7 set off the war in Gaza. The two countries helped secure an initial pause in hostilities and hostage release in November. But tensions between the Israelis and Qataris are on a razor’s edge after leaked audio of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu captured the Israeli leader disparaging Qatar in a conversation with Israeli hostage families.
In 2019 during the great march of return, IDF troops murdered 223 protesters and shot over six thousand with live ammunition - often aiming for their knees to cripple them for life.
That’s what the so-called ceasefire was like before Oct 7th.
Saying Hamas ended the ceasefire is oversimplifying the situation. During the so-called ceasefire Israel’s war on Gaza never ended.
This would be a more compelling point had you not cited yet another border incursion by Hamas into Israeli territory, wouldn’t it?
A lasting ceasefire means that both sides must cease fire, border incursions and other blatant provocations. (It wouldn’t hurt to cut down on the militant rhetoric too, but I digress…)
If South Koreans or North Koreans decided tomorrow to march thousands into the Korean DMZ, what do you think the other side would do as a response? Do you suppose that it might rapidly escalate into a very dangerous situation for both sides?
The bottom line is that there was relative peace and stability on October 6th, and then on October 7th, something happened that undeniably made the conflict worse for everyone. There is not an innocent person in the Levant whose life is better post-October 7th, and Hamas are to blame and thus cannot be trusted by any rational mind to preserve future ceasefires.
There is a long history of militant border incursions on Israeli territory going all the way back to the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and they always backfire when Israel fights back, which is why Gaza’s borders are as they are today. Gaza was 3-4x bigger and controlled over half of the Egyptian border before the Arab League very unwisely chose to invade Israel in 1948.
One would think that the Palestinians would figure out by now that militant provocations against Israel are not the path to a better life. They only embolden Netenyahu’s government, which has historically thrived on demonizing Hamas. Hamas’ Islamist jihad and Netenyahu’s right-wing fascism have been mutually fueling the cause of political extremism in the Middle East, and that’s why they are in the situation that we see today.
Unfortunately, neither side is run by political leaders who want peace, only power. And so, unless Israeli and Palestinian leadership changes, I feel that we won’t see a long-term ceasefire or lasting peace in our lifetimes.
Apartheid isn’t peace. It’s not like Gaza has control over its border. It’s a ghetto!
Racist paternalism.