In Washington US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the proposal handed to Qatar, “was a strong one and a compelling one that offers some hope."
Hamas rejected a hostage deal drafted in Paris over the weekend because it did not include a permanent ceasefire.
More people know about the Palestinian conflict and Israeli war crimes than ever before. Plus, for a brief moment, the deaths on the Israeli side were higher than on the Palestinian side for the first time. It’s also the only time they’ve had a large number of hostages to use as leverage for a deal.
If your fundamental goals are dead people and just publicity, sure, then I guess this was a roaring success. Typically success for matters is defined by advancing, say, the freedom and dignity of the Palestinians suffering under oppression, though. And by that very reasonable metric, no, this whole thing has been a catastrophic failure on the part of Hamas, the group that (violently) usurped governance of Gaza years ago. There is unlikely, and this was predictable from the get-go, to be any substantive advancement of the benefit of the Palestinian people, or Gazans in particular. A random lemmy poster put it on a perfectly succinct and correct manner when reports of 10/7 first came out–Hamas shot every single Palestinian in both Gaza and the West Bank square in the dick this time.
Oh they definitely fucked up. You won’t hear any argument on that from me. We all saw it coming that day. But if I was them, I would also realize that it becomes especially worthless if they lose all their hostages, too.
More people know about the Palestinian conflict and Israeli war crimes than ever before. Plus, for a brief moment, the deaths on the Israeli side were higher than on the Palestinian side for the first time. It’s also the only time they’ve had a large number of hostages to use as leverage for a deal.
If your fundamental goals are dead people and just publicity, sure, then I guess this was a roaring success. Typically success for matters is defined by advancing, say, the freedom and dignity of the Palestinians suffering under oppression, though. And by that very reasonable metric, no, this whole thing has been a catastrophic failure on the part of Hamas, the group that (violently) usurped governance of Gaza years ago. There is unlikely, and this was predictable from the get-go, to be any substantive advancement of the benefit of the Palestinian people, or Gazans in particular. A random lemmy poster put it on a perfectly succinct and correct manner when reports of 10/7 first came out–Hamas shot every single Palestinian in both Gaza and the West Bank square in the dick this time.
Oh they definitely fucked up. You won’t hear any argument on that from me. We all saw it coming that day. But if I was them, I would also realize that it becomes especially worthless if they lose all their hostages, too.