Talking sense about the hostages
JVL Introduction
In his latest podcase Peter Beinart looks at the burning issue of the Israeli hostages held in Gaza.
For so many, releasing the hostages and Israel winning the war in Gaza are intimately linked objectives.
For Beinart, they are diametrically opposed:
“Which is to say, if you actually care passionately about getting as many of the hostages as possible released alive, you should be adamantly opposed to this war because the imperatives of continuing the war and the imperatives of getting the hostages out—as many of them as possible alive—are in direct contradiction.”
It is very much in line with the thinking of Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet (Israeli intelligence), posted separately here.
RK
This article was originally published by the Beinart Notebook on Mon 15 Jan 2024. Read the original here.
To save the hostages,end the war
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So Zionists have to admit that Zionism has failed. So what’s their face-saver? And will this happen before the climate catastrophe swallows everything?
America pretends it’s possible to negotiate deals over the hostages; the conditions for the ceasefire; and the rapid creation of the new state of Palestine without the Palestinians being free to choose whom they want to represent them. It’s not.
The only group which has both most popular legitimacy amongst Palestinians and skill and experience in negotiating is Hamas. So Israel and America will HAVE to negotiate with Hamas-led teams, in spite of not wanting to.
If Israel and America aren’t prepared to work honestly with Hamas then the slim chances of these difficult negotiations even BEGINNING disappear.
Any significant delays in starting the negotiations or delivering tangible benefits for both sides will cause both parties to abandon them. It’s not practicable to hold new elections, for example, because the negotiating process would die before they happened.
Perhaps the best hope of proper negotiations being POSSIBLE is if Israel’s government remains semi-functioning (if it doesn’t, there’s nobody for the Palestinians to negotiate with); while also being scared out of its wits by the disasters coming its way. A western arms embargo against Israel arising out of the ICJ verdict, for example, would put Netanyahu under enough pressure to offer a deal acceptable to the Palestinians.
The grounds for HOPE seem very fragile.
Israel has no intention of stopping . Two years of ESCALATING violence against Palestinians knowing that they would be forced to retaliate and give Israel the excuse it needed to destroy Gaza & take possession. They have already signed contracts with BP for the Gaza Gas field & they want to build a canal to build the biggest port in thst part of the world for their exports.. it was NEVER about Hamas or the hostages.
Brian Robinson asks “So what’s their face-saver ? ”
The answer is that they blame the Palestinians, who one minuet don’t exist, but when its convenient they do.
Cathy Davies hit the nail squarely on the head. This whole saga is about the recently discovered eastern Mediterranean Gas Field that stretches under Gaza.
Remember the lies that Israel was pumping out about the Hamas attack, there were no babies beheaded, no women raped, the Festival goers were killed by an Israeli Helicopter Squadron, who were videoing themselves. These lies were to give them the excuse to commit Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in Gaza, take the land and hand it over to BP to start drilling to extract the gas. I have said these comments before on a JVL Blog, sorry to repeat myself.