GNITN - Special Edition

Israel At War – Day 141

Progress But Far From A Deal

A Framework To Start

The Israeli delegation in Paris is heading back home after the basics of a hostage deal were agreed upon, and they were seen in a post from X as this:

The updated U.S. framework for a Gaza hostage deal includes the following point, per sources with knowledge:

  • The release of several hundred Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the releases of 35-40 Israelis hostages, including civilian women, female soldiers, men over 50 and hostages in serious medical condition
  • The number of Palestinian prisoners that will be released for each of the female soldiers will be higher for the other abductees that will be released at this stage and will also include prisoners who were sentenced to long period in prison for killing Israelis.
  • For each hostage who is released, Israel will agree to a day of ceasefire, when in total in the first phase of the deal it will be possible to reach six weeks of ceasefire.
  • The U.S. framework includes an initial return of Palestinian citizens to the north of the Gaza Strip that will start during the implementation of this stage of the deal, under conditions that will be defined during the detailed negotiations.
  • The U.S. framework also includes a significant increase in the scope of humanitarian aid that enters the Gaza Strip.
  • The next phases in the deal that focus on release of soldiers and exchange of bodies were left very general as in the previous framework.

Some of the comments in reply to the post were not very impressed with the outline since it doesn’t make a way for all the hostages to be released. Six weeks of ceasefire is an awful lot of time for Hamas to regroup and try and live another day. I tend to agree with previous comments that Rafah is going to be hit hard unless all the hostages are released. Period.

Guarded Optimism

We see in an article from The Times Of Israel that there is hope that a deal could occur but such promise is restrained:

An Israeli delegation of top security officials returned from talks in Paris on Saturday as reports spread of growing hope in Jerusalem that a new hostage release deal with Hamas could be within reach.

Israel’s war cabinet was to convene Saturday evening to discuss the emerging “outline of an agreement,” described by an Israeli official cited widely in media as a “basis on which to build a plan and the principles for negotiations.”

“There’s significant progress and a solid basis for discussions,” the official said.

Progress? Yes. A deal? No. We read more on why Israel isn’t certain anything will come from this progress:

At the same time, an Israeli official told The Times of Israel that while there was optimism in Israeli media about the likelihood of a deal, the delegation itself was more cautious.

Talks in Paris were held between Israel, American, Egyptian and Qatari representatives who have been working for weeks to secure a deal to free hostages and pause the fighting. However, a key party not present at the Paris talks was Hamas, and it remained to be seen how the group would respond to the latest proposal.

Hamas is said to back off on some of their requirements for a deal:

Another senior Israeli official cautioned in a statement Saturday that negotiators were “still far from a deal” but acknowledged that Hamas had “dropped some of its demands.”

In any event, the war cabinet is expected to approve the current outline:

A senior government official told Channel 12 that the outline as it appears to stand would likely be approved by the full cabinet.

If the eventual agreement reflects these terms, the TV report said, and if they are also accepted by Hamas, there would be “a high chance that, before March 11, we will see hostages freed for the first time since [the first truce collapsed at the end of] November.”

IDF Says Military Pressure Is Still Needed

In an article from The Jerusalem Post we read that an IDF chief still believes every battle they win is one step closer to getting all the hostages back:

IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi said that soldiers' "achievements - another battalion that you dismantle, another underground infrastructure destroyed, another neighborhood where the population is evacuated to a safe space - all these things put positive pressure on the matter of releasing the hostages," during a situational assessment with other high-ranking IDF officers in the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday.

He commented further on the release of hostages, saying, "We are currently in the days of negotiations on the release of the hostages; I don't know this will develop; there are those whose job is to deal with Gaza; our job is to deal with fighting."

Halevi explains the correlation between negotiations and his job to fight this way:

He ended his assessment with a statement on positive progressions of the combat, saying,"[Our progress in the Gaza Strip] is the lever that we are lowering on Hamas, and you are lowering it very well; we need to continue to lower it even harder, I hope we will be able to translate the pressure into the release of the hostages as well.'

Hamas Isn’t Working In Good Faith

I think you can only negotiate with Hamas so far and that Halevi is correct that keeping pressure on them is the best way to get the hostages released. However, any deal with Hamas is really a deal with the devil and we all know that the devil never keeps any deals he brokers and never will. Such is the quandary of a civilized nation that tries to work with an uncivilized group that has as one of their goals to annihilate them and take their land. I’m not making this up, it’s in their charter:

"The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine." (Article 6)

On the destruction of Israel:

"Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." (Preamble)

And as for these negotiations? The Hamas Covenant says this:

"[Peace] initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement... Those conferences are no more than a means to appoint the infidels as arbitrators in the lands of Islam... There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility." (Article 13)

And their hatred for all Jews is also seen in their covenant:

The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: 'O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him." (Article 7)

They blame Israel for a whole host of things and vow to be the very ones who will end the “reign” of the Jews:

"The enemies have been scheming for a long time ... and have accumulated huge and influential material wealth. With their money, they took control of the world media... With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the globe... They stood behind the French Revolution, the Communist Revolution and most of the revolutions we hear about... With their money they formed secret organizations - such as the Freemasons, Rotary Clubs and the Lions - which are spreading around the world, in order to destroy societies and carry out Zionist interests... They stood behind World War I ... and formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains... There is no war going on anywhere without them having their finger in it." (Article 22)

"The HAMAS regards itself the spearhead and the vanguard of the circle of struggle against World Zionism... Islamic groups all over the Arab world should also do the same, since they are best equipped for their future role in the fight against the warmongering Jews." (Article 32)

If you had any doubt before, you shouldn’t have any now about who Israel is trying to make a deal with. And if you are praying for the peace of Jerusalem, this is the specific spirit of the antichrist you need to restrain.