Things Aren’t Peaceful in Palestine - Page 119

DOHA, Qatar—Key negotiators in an agreement to free Israeli hostages and pause the fighting in Gaza said the deal would take effect Friday morning, even as the parties raced to overcome sticking points to the arrangement weeks in the making.

Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said a temporary cease-fire would begin at 7 a.m. local time Friday. In return, an initial group of 13 hostages, all women and children held by Hamas, would be freed around 4 p.m. the same day, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari. A group of Palestinian prisoners, also women and children, would be released around the same time, he added.

“We are hoping that we don’t see any delays. I think we’ve reached a point now where everything is in place and we’re ready to go on the ground,” Ansari said during a news conference in Doha. He said that the Qataris were setting up an operations room to monitor the cease-fire and communicate with the parties to the conflict and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The announcement came after the deal, which was approved by Israel and Hamas earlier this week, stumbled over logistical issues relating to the details of the first people to be exchanged.

Senior Egyptian officials blamed that setback on last-minute demands from Hamas and its failure to hand over a list of the first group of hostages it planned to release. Qatar said the list of the initial hostages to be released was handed over on Thursday. Israel’s prime minister’s office also said it had received and was checking an initial list of names and was currently in contact with all of the hostages’ families.

Officials from Qatar, Egypt, Israel and the U.S. are still pushing to work out the deal’s implementation, including the finer details of what happens to the hostages once they are out of Hamas’s hands and to those left behind. Egypt said it continued to work with all the parties involved and expected the agreement to come into force by Friday. Meanwhile, Israel pressed its military operation in Gaza, hitting hundreds of targets across the strip.

The broad terms of the agreement outlined a four-day pause in the fighting in Gaza and the release of 50 hostages by Hamas in exchange for 150 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. All those swapped would be women and children. The deal calls for the hostages to be released in smaller groups each day over the course of four days and reserves the right to extend the pause if more hostages are freed.

Senior Egyptian officials said Hamas failed to formally sign off on the mechanism for the hostages’ release, and didn’t provide Israel with a specific list of around a dozen or more to be freed first. The two sides already reviewed the full list of 50 people set for release, including their names, ages and genders.

According to negotiators, Hamas asked Israel for a list of the first group of Palestinian prisoners to be released so it could inform their families. When Israel turned down the request, Hamas refused to share the list of hostages it plans to hand over on the first day. Ansari, the Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman, said on Thursday that the lists of hostages and prisoners to be swapped beyond Friday hadn’t yet been exchanged.

Another technical issue gumming up the process is access by the International Committee of the Red Cross to the released hostages, and negotiations over the exit through which they will leave Gaza, according to officials familiar with the situation. As well as its border with Israel, Gaza also shares a frontier with Egypt.

Israel had wanted the hostages to be handed over to the Red Cross before their transfer to Israel, while Hamas is now asking for them to be given directly to Egypt, the officials said. Israel has also asked that the Red Cross be given access to those hostages who remain in Gaza after the first exchange, something Hamas hasn’t agreed to.

Ansari said the hostages would be handed over to the Red Cross, without elaborating.

“It constitutes the first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel for this conflict,” he said of the deal.

Egypt and Qatar, which are mediating in the talks, late Wednesday decided to delay the release by 24 hours in order to resolve the remaining issues, according to people familiar with the talks.

Negotiators were working on Thursday to resolve the logistical issues and remained hopeful that the deal would be set in motion by Friday, according to one official familiar with the talks.

On November 23 2023 16:13 GreenHorizons wrote:

Hamas has been saying for weeks that dozens of hostages were missing/killed/buried under rubble from Israeli air strikes.



www.reuters.com

So I don't think you're reading the dynamics correctly.

On November 23 2023 21:34 RvB wrote:
We should just wait for independent verification. Access for the red cross is part of the deal so we'll know soon enough. Hamas is not reliable but on the other hand do have an incentive to keep the hostages alive since it's their only leverage.

On November 24 2023 01:58 Mohdoo wrote:
What I don’t understand is...+ Show Spoiler +

On November 24 2023 02:17 GreenHorizons wrote:

A lot when it comes to this conflict. Whether it's shaming Palestinian parents for not leaving Gaza before you learned Israel doesn't let them leave, this recent example of silly speculation about the deal, or any in-between, it's because you're pulling these ideas out of your ass while being oblivious to their absurdity.

On November 24 2023 02:31 Mohdoo wrote:

Egypt doesn’t let them leave. Muslim nations leadership don’t wants them to leave because they view them as martyrs. I’ve quoted the leadership of Jordan and Egypt numerous times at this point. They are dehumanized and regarded as weapons by Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, Iran, and Qatar.

And Hamas agrees and has reiterated they are a nation of martyrs. Do you disagree with Hamas on this point? Are all Palestinians some kinda blood sacrifice to the antisemitism cause? Or are they humans who Egypt should allow to escape this war?

Israel and Hamas are both committing an evil by participating in a war, but the depraved indifference from the folks claiming they are cheering for Gaza is also extreme. Rather than slapping a sticker on their foreheads that says “weapon, use as needed”, Egypt and other neighboring nations should be frantically doing all they can to help people escape.

You said “let them escape”, which indicates some number want to escape. Should Egypt open their border to let them escape? Should people help them escape? It’s unclear to me why folks are pretending it is ok to cheer on blood sacrifices. Rather than demanding further blood sacrifices, neighboring nations should be trying to let folks escape because they want to leave a war zone.

On November 24 2023 03:12 RvB wrote:

They've been clear about their aims since the start. Release the hostages and get rid of Hamas. Negotiating for their release was always the most likely way to release at least some of them. They don't really lose that much with a temporary ceasefire. More time for Hamas to prepare and get on their feet but at the same time it's also a pause for Israel to prepare for the next parts of their campaign.

On November 24 2023 02:53 GreenHorizons wrote:
Regarding the deal, I am curious about why Israel abandoned their "we won't negotiate" stance to take this deal and what it might mean going forward. As far as I've seen Israel hasn't given their reasoning and insists their invasion/illegal occupation will continue after any pause.