Ceasefire Rejected

[Phoebe]

My understanding if I'm getting this right Is that Israel could have accepted a deal almost identical to one that Israel itself proposed in past ceasefire negotiations. And it could have won the release of many of the remaining hostages in this process (I'm assuming they can't promise everybody because some are dead). But instead of choosing to save the lives of the hostages, it has chosen to seize the Rafah crossing where most of the humanitarian aid is coming through. I assume the US knew this was going to happen which is why they started constructing their dock, although it's not clear how much good that will do.

From this point on it seems fair to say that Israel does not care about its hostages and has chosen to let them die, and is responsible for whatever the food situation is in Gaza. Thousands of people have taken to the streets in Israel to protest this b*******, perhaps because they would like to have their hostages back and they don't really want to be complicit in deliberately starving a bunch of innocent people. Apparently we finally reached a point where the US says enough, we oppose this, but it won't mean anything unless they actually act to oppose it.

[Mike]

According to the Israeli person who acted as the representative of the hostages in negotiations, Hamas offered a deal to release ALL civilian hostages as early as October 9 or 10 in exchange for the IDF not entering Gaza, which lines up with reporting of Palestinian journalists at the time.

[Phoebe]

JFC I am hopping mad about it.

[Phoebe]

Hoping the current cease fire proposal is accepted - no idea about the details or whether they are good details, but this seems like the closest possibility so far?

[Mike]

I would love to be wrong, but I don't believe there will be a ceasefire. Either they will not come to terms, OR they'll agree to a ceasefire and Israel will continue their attacks anyway. This has been their pattern in the past. And now that it has become so hard to get news out of Gaza, Israel could conceivably break a ceasefire while plausibly denying it for quite a while.

So Israel has a ceasefire proposal, and the U.S. state department is leaning hard on Palestine to accept it. The U.N. has voted (if I understand correctly) to express their approval. Hamas, meanwhile, has said they will accept it with some amendments. Specifically, they want some sort of oversight to “confirm the cease-fire, withdrawal, reconstruction and (prisoner) exchange." Basically, they want some verification so the world can see if Israel is as good as its word. Israel is acting like this is an outrageous demand, and U.S. Secretary of State Blinken says oversight really isn't necessary.

But Israel has no real incentive to change now (other than world opinion) because even with as bad as it's gotten, Israel continues to bomb and kill and continues to commit war crimes and continues to deny and restrict food, aid, and basic necessities to a population that is starving and sick, and in response, the U.S. still protects them from any consequences at the U.N., still provides money and weapons to Israel, and still refuses to follow through with any of the Biden administration's implied or direct threats.

The longer Israel can stall, the closer they are to being done.

[Phoebe]

My puzzlement in brief:
One group of people says the US could have a ceasefire today by snapping its fingers, and the other group says it can't be done because the conditions required are untenable, not just from Israel's perspective but for other legit reasons. The details occasionally make sense but more often than not, I don't get it.
So I don't know what to make of these claims that Harris wants to push for a ceasefire and they are doing so, yet it never happens. It's just difficult to trust that's what they actually want and are doing. Why exactly can't it be done then?

[Tahlvin]

Now there is some sort of attack in Lebanon where handheld pagers are exploding all over the place, killing and injuring quite a few people rather indiscriminately.

[Phoebe]

My very limited understanding of this is that some group traced back ultimately to Iran tried to avenge the assassination of one of the Hamas leaders in Iran by trying to assassinate a senior defense official in Israel. And the way they did it was by trying to blow up some type of small electronic device that was on or near this official.

So after that plot was foiled Israel detonated all of these pagers which had an explosive battery, apparently installed in some upgrade 5 months ago. It's like a statement about anything you can do, we can do worse and harder...
Then this morning they were saying some of the Hezbollah who had a pager on them felt it getting warmer so discarded it, and then if it exploded it might have been around God only knows what innocent people.

[Phoebe]

Here's a good one I found:
https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-ea ... 024-09-18/

[Kyle]

Walkie talkies exploded in Lebanon today. I don't know how this- which is indiscriminate injury and death- isn't considered a terroristic act.

[Stan]

Israel has proven it's willing to kill 10 innocent people to kill 1 terrorist. I'm semi-convinced that they look for an excuse to attack Gaza and Lebanon every decade or so to destroy most of their infrastructure.

Much like the devastation in Yemen, this is partly about the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. SA and Israel were on the verge of normalizing relations so Iran pushed Hamas to make a big attack, knowing that Israel would over react and make things too hot for any Muslim country to conduct diplomacy with Israel. Hamas knew they were causing thousands of Palestinian deaths in the long run. Most people in power are awful.

[Kyle]

I'm semi-convinced that they look for an excuse to attack Gaza and Lebanon every decade or so to destroy most of their infrastructure.

Several years ago I heard an Israeli analyst refer to this very thing. He said it's colloquially referred to as "cutting the grass."

[Mike]

I have heard that same reference. The fact that they have a casual term for the occasional maintenance-slaughter of their oppressed peoples is horrifying.