Reports have found that it is Israel that won’t agree to the ceasefire deal’s framework, despite Blinken’s claims.
Following the UN Security Council vote to approve a three-phase ceasefire in Gaza, U.S. officials and other international allies of Israel are cynically placing blame on Hamas for a stall in current ceasefire negotiations — even as Israel has insisted on indefinitely continuing its massacre in Gaza and Hamas has said its main request is a guarantee that Israel would actually honor the ceasefire.
But reports from a wide variety of news sources on how both Israel and Hamas are approaching the ceasefire proposal suggest that Blinken is lying about which party is accepting of the deal. Indeed, reports have found that it is actually Israel that won’t agree to the deal’s framework: an immediate ceasefire with a limited prisoner and hostage exchange, then a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and ultimately the reconstruction of Gaza and return of Palestinians to their homes.
Israel’s insistence on continuing its genocide has been consistent throughout the last eight months, including in reaction to the most recent ceasefire proposals of the past weeks. Officials have said Israel will only stop bombarding Gaza when they decide that Hamas has been eliminated and Palestinians there no longer pose a threat to Israel — a pledge that requires the mass slaughter of Palestinian civilians, as military procedures and Israel’s own public statements have shown.
But the main demand from Hamas appears to be straightforward, according to other officials familiar with the negotiations. Multiple outlets citing such sources have echoed what Hamas officials have said: that they are primarily concerned with getting guarantees from the U.S. and Israel that the deal will actually lead to a ceasefire and withdrawal from Gaza.
Specifically, Hamas is concerned about a lack of assurances from the current proposal about the transition between the first and second phases of the plan, Reuters reports, citing multiple sources involved with the talks. The first phase involves a six-week ceasefire, with the release of some Israeli hostages, while the second phase calls for a permanent ceasefire and Israeli troop withdrawal.
Since Oct. 7th the Israeli military has either directly killed or provided protection to lethal settler attacks in the West Bank, resulting in over 500 deaths in a section of Occupied Palestinian Territory that theoretically isn't at war. So there's Israeli military presence, violence, and oppression of Palestinians even where Hamas isn't in control.
Hamas are not good guys by any stretch, but unfortunately they are the folks bargaining for Gazans. In the face of continued Israeli aggression, disregard for international approval/law, and stated plans it's no wonder they're demanding that any deals have rock-solid guarantees on an enforceable timetable.
How the hell Hamas are the good guys when they're the ones that pushed Israel for so long that it finally snapped? Have we forgotten them proudly parading a dead/unconscious girl nude around the streets.
How israel the good guys when they imposed a blockade on gaza controlling all in and out in it and control water and electricity in gaza. When they are continuing to expends illegal settlements in west bank and when they never stopped killed palestinians even before the 7 of october?
Hamas's sole goal is to bait Israel into killing as many Palestinians as possible so they can unite the Arab world via their mutual hatred for Jews. The only reason they're even making a façade of negotiating is so headlines can make Israel look unreasonable for not accepting their one-sided deals.
Just to get it out of the way at the start - Hamas is terrible. They are violent fundamentalists and do not deserve support. Neither Israel nor Hamas are "good" and the only side that deserves support and recognition are the civilians, Israeli or Palestinian, suffering because of/under their evil regimes. Now on to the rebuttal.
"Hamas, for its part, is alleged to have emerged out of the Israeli-financed Islamist movement in Gaza, Israel’s then-military governor in that territory, Brig. Gen. Yitzhak Segev, disclosing in 1981 that he had been given a budget for funding Palestinian Islamists to counter the rising power of Palestinian secularists."
"In a 1994 book, “The Other Side of Deception,” Mossad whistleblower Victor Ostrovsky contended that aiding Hamas meshed with “Mossad’s general plan” for an Arab world “run by fundamentalists” that would reject “any negotiations with the West,” thereby leaving Israel as “the only democratic, rational country in the region.” Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official involved in Gaza for over two decades, told a newspaper interviewer in 2009 that, “Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel’s creation.”
As far as the nature of the demands: "one-sided deals" is a matter of opinion, but "we need guarantees you'll actually leave, stop killing/injuring many tens of thousands of civilians, destroying hospitals/schools/aid, etc." seems like a pretty standard request at peace negotiations. Especially since Israel has repeatedly promised to continue to prosecute the war and establish long-term armed forces in Gaza.
I hope this doesn't just dissolve into hand-waving and general dismissal based on "he said / she said". Someone call the bluff and let's see the cards face-up.
Disclaimer: I have no idea and it's confusing; I just read a bunch of stories just now; and people lie sometimes. That said, these are the details of the full plan as of a couple weeks ago, which supposedly came from Israel but which they immediately clammed up about whether or not they actually would agree to, not saying either yes or no for quite some time, which was weird. There is still some uncertainty over whether they will "agree to" their own proposal.
Hamas didn't reject the deal but they asked for changes (details not made public and people disagree about what they were and how big they are). Personally I tend to put quite a lot of faith in the Qatari spokesman whose blackly comic summary of the issue was "two fundamental differences; between what Hamas wants as a permanent ceasefire, and what Israel wants as a hostage release and maybe a plan to continue the war."
On that note, someone in Israel's government (no one knows who) said yesterday, "Israel will not end the war before achieving all its war objectives: destroying Hamas’s military and governing capabilities, freeing all the hostages and ensuring Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel in the future." I.e. we get all the hostages back and keep killing you until we feel like we're done, and then at that point, we'll be happy to cease fire.
We finally see the details of what's going on in Israel's government: Sounds like Benny Gantz (who already resigned) and Yair Lapid are supporting the cease-fire, and Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir have threatened to "collapse the government" if it goes through. Nothing public about what Netanyahu thinks but Benny Gantz cited disagreements with him as why he was resigning.
Both Blinken and Qatar are blaming both Israel and Hamas for doing too much bickering and not enough agreeing to the cease fire. Blinken points out, with maybe a certain amount of validity, that Hamas could have simply said "yes" to the US/Israel/UN/Qatari approved plan already on the table instead of giving the Israelis any room to blame them and keep the war going which is clearly what they wanted to do anyway.
To lie to the world and pretend to be a neutral arbiter while clearly being on the side of the genocidal apartheid regime like every other secretary of state for the last 75 years?
Well, in that case I'll say something I would never otherwise say, based on all he's done so far: Blinken is doing a great job! Well done!
(Autocorrect changed great to grotesque, which is more accurate in general)
then a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and ultimately the reconstruction of Gaza and return of Palestinians to their homes.
I don't have anything to add, but want to ask a question about this part: what fucking homes?!?!
"Ok, you can go back home now. Btw, it's a pile of rubble now, so good luck with that. Bye!"
It's going to take years, if not decades, to clear the rubble and the human remains still inside.
The millions of reconstruction for billions worth of damage will ensure there is maximum amount of 'unpopulated' Gazan area for Israel to remain occupying.
Which also means there is a baked in flashpoint of conflict where Israel will have to leave areas that are rebuilt. The entire history and existence of Israel indicates this will not happen: settlers will occupy anywhere the IDF is: which brings us back to the status quo.
Regardless of whatever changes each side wants, stopping the shooting and bombardments would be a gesture that would represent actual intent in reaching a real ceasefire.
They rate CBS News and weather channel as “middle” and “reliable”.
Ad fontes media are by no means perfect, but they are generally the best in the field. Unlike some of their competitors they don’t rate Reuters and AP as left wing lol.
Obviously reliability and bias are subjective — as is everything in the social sciences. But that doesn’t mean attempting to quanify it is not useful. It’s subjective to quantify democracy for example but the economists democracy index is useful — or the Human development index etc.
It's no surprise Truthout is biased towards Palestinian Human Rights, but they are certainly more credible than Ad Fontes or MBFC suggests. If you look at the few articles that Ad Fontes shows as 'low credibility' you can see that the articles are well sourced and quoted. If you look at MBFC, they are rated as 'Mixed' on factual reporting despite no Articles failing a fact check.
Although Truthout has not failed a fact check by an IFCN fact checker, they have reported some stories that were not factual. For example, a reporter claimed that Karl Rove was indicted on charges when in fact, he wasn’t. The reporter continued to claim without evidence. See the link here. Although this is only one example, it shows that this source should be checked when in doubt.
Overall, we rate Truthout strongly Left Biased based on story selection and political positions that favor the left. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to publishing a false story and promoting anti-GMO propaganda. (5/15/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 12/01/2022)
The article listed here links to a broken Truthout link, with the article author being Jason Leopold. I'm not sure about the article since I can't see it, but he has other articles here until 2013.
No failed fact checks for anything Palestine related. The one other article mentioned you can find here listed as an Op-Ed. Written by Robert Schooler in 2016, and the only article on Truthout written by him.
That's certainly not enough for me to write off the entire news outlet. Neither of these people are the ones writing these articles about what is happening in Gaza. If you find info in the article you think may not be factual, let me know.
PS: The disagreement in the negotiation is the ambiguity on the permanence of the cease fire: hamas wants guarantees that the war will not continue in the future. Biden is not in a position to give or force that guarantee if he loses. Israel does not want such a guarantee, because they think they can eventually exterminate hamas faster than the suffering of palestinians radicalizes new militants.
The Biden Administration is happily an active Israeli Hasbara propagandist.
The second most sad things in all this situation (after what's happening to Palestinians) is how the upcoming US election is turns out to be between Administration openly supporting "quasi-Nazis" because of their ethnicity and even spreading Himmler-style propaganda and Fascists.
I thought I read something earlier today that mentioned that the current deal is that the hostages be returned and then Israel will pull out it's troops.
Hamas wants to alter it so that they release a few hostages, then Israel pulls out, and then they release the rest of the hostages.
It sounds like Israel had already agreed to that deal so isn't this in Hamas' ball park to accept or not?
Then again it sounds like every time the deal is altered, the other side wants to male new changes,
This is the actual deal. It's been approved by the US, UN, and Qatar as a mediator. According to the US, it came from Israel, but there's apparently a little civil war going on in Israel's government about whether to "agree" to it or not. It seems likely to me that the terms were simply dictated to a mostly-unwilling Israeli government, then announced (by the US) "on behalf of Israel," and now they're pouting about it but also don't want to say out loud to their sugar daddy "fuck you I don't want to," because then we might stop arming them so comprehensively and vetoing things for them at the UN, and so they're stuck.
Hamas's proposed changes are not public, so it's impossible to say how big a deal they are or how necessary. I tend to blame Israel in general because they are so clearly acting in bad faith and also they're the ones killing all these innocent people, but... I also have to say that Blinken's statement makes some sense to me.
It would have been very easy for Hamas to simply agree to the deal on the table, and if Israel wants to reject it, or “accept” it but just continue the war immediately under some paper thin excuse (both of which seem highly likely), then at least there's not this weird confusion about whose fault that is. It's hard to come up with an explanation for Hamas wanting changes and fucking the whole thing up that doesn't involve blaming them for the inevitable results of that decision at least partly. To me as an unqualified observer person.
Phase one includes an “immediate, full, and complete ceasefire with the release of hostages including women, the elderly and the wounded, the return of the remains of some hostages who have been killed, and the exchange of Palestinian prisoners”.
It calls for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from “populated areas” of Gaza, the return of Palestinians to their homes and neighbourhoods throughout the enclave, including in the north, as well as the safe and effective distribution of humanitarian assistance at scale.
Phase two would see a permanent end to hostilities “in exchange for the release of all other hostages still in Gaza, and a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza”.
In phase three, “a major multi-year reconstruction plan for Gaza” would begin and the remains of any deceased hostages still in the Strip would be returned to Israel.
The Council also underlined the proposal’s provision that if negotiations take longer than six weeks for phase one, the ceasefire will continue as long as negotiations continue.
No territorial change
In the resolution, the Security Council rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip, including any actions that reduce the territory of the enclave.