Hamas has now submitted its response to the Israeli-crafted framework and Netanyahu responded by announcing he would recall his negotiating team from Doha.
https://x.com/jeremyscahill/status/1948377994315141371
A few notes on the state of the Gaza "ceasefire" negotiations. Hamas has now submitted its response to the Israeli-crafted framework and Netanyahu responded by announcing he would recall his negotiating team from Doha.
Israel has been pushing a narrative via leaks to mostly Hebrew media that Hamas is taking a hard line and obstructing a deal. This is totally false.
Israel put forward a proposal to effectively occupy huge swaths of Gaza indefinitely, including building a large concentration camp in Gaza. Hamas, of course, rejected this because this is not a negotiation, it is a declaration of intent to continue the mass extermination and expulsion campaign. In response, Hamas showed a willingness to agree to Israeli troop withdrawal and redeployment "maps" that would still allow significant Israeli imposed "buffer zones" encircling Gaza.
On the issue of aid, Israel has demanded that its lethal aid scheme, the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, remain in Gaza. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed trying to obtain meager food rations from these pitiful sites. Hamas proposed that the UN resume control of the distribution to its 400 sites in Gaza, the only effective program that has ever existed.
There are more than 10,000 Palestinians held captive by Israel. There are also an estimated 2,000 snatched since October 7 for the explicit purpose of "exchanging" them for Israeli captives in Gaza. Hamas proposed a framework that would free these 2,000 Palestinian hostages as well as hundreds of other Palestinians, including those serving life sentences, in return for Israeli soldiers held captive in Gaza.
Finally, Hamas has asked for a clear guarantee from the U.S. that Israel will not resume the genocide after an initial 60 day truce, so that negotiations for a permanent end to the war and occupation can be reached.
Israel has promoted a false narrative that it has been reasonable and Hamas has been obstructionist. The reality is that Netanyahu has repeatedly sabotaged deals throughout the past 22 months. And Israel unilaterally crushed the January ceasefire endorsed by both Trump and Biden and resumed the genocide and forced starvation campaign. He has boasted that he will get a "side letter" from Trump allowing him to resume the war regardless of any deal that he signs.
This is the context in which the Palestinians are forced to operate in these "negotiations" with an Israeli side that daily makes clear—in public—that it wants to wipe Palestinians off the map of Gaza. The Palestinian negotiators are left with only one actual hope: that Donald Trump will decide to stop Israel's war of annihilation. That is a huge gamble regardless of what the actual signed deal states.
posted by Satish Sharma at
07:02
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