this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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The fact that the Israeli government is acting in bad faith and doesn't actually care about the hostages doesn't mean that the Israeli people don't care.
The fact that people who aren't genocidal maniacs desperately want the hostages to be freed means that getting them back would be a huge get for the Israeli government, worth many times more than a temporary truce is.
Okay, but leverage is typically supposed to be against the one you're negotiating or dealing with, and Hamas is quite clearly up against the Israeli government at this point in time.
I don't see how that follows. The Israeli government is quite clear in its goals - it has killed hostages on its own initiative. It cares only insofar as it would look bad to not negotiate for hostage a release.
A ceasefire is far more important to Hamas than Israel. Israel wants to keep hammering Gaza. If the negotiations fail, then the answer isn't "Well, now we can use our leverage!", it's "Fuck, our only leverage has gotten us literally nothing".
Which is basically what Israel is offering. They're asking for the political points from getting the hostages back and will invade and/or bomb the shit out of Rafah no matter what.
Or to simplify: giving everything in exchange for basically nothing is a bad deal. Hamas knows it, the Israeli government knows it and the NYT knows it.
The latter two are just gaslighting people about it to pretend that the Israeli government is being anything approaching reasonable.
They're offering a 40-day ceasefire, which would be more beneficial to Hamas than to Israel. It's not inherently ridiculous for Hamas to accept in exchange for the hostages. The issue is that Israel isn't serious, and will dance around with terms so they can claim Hamas rejected it again.
But it's not everything. The hostages are minor at most, and leverage unutilized is as worthless as not having leverage at all. Furthermore, all negotiations are done by the relative positions of the negotiators - if Hamas wants to hold out for a better deal, that's certainly a valid strategic decision. But it must also be recognized that it is quite probably long odds since Israel is overwhelmingly in the better position at this point in time.
Once Rafah is taken, this whole miserable affair is going to wind up. And almost certainly not in a good way.
Speaking PURELY from a strategic perspective, what do you think the hostages CAN be traded for? What is something that is realistic for the Israeli government to offer other than a temporary ceasefire? Knowing the Israeli government's current position and goals? Not "What would be MORAL for them to offer", what, realistically, can Hamas get out of the Israeli government with these hostages that would be more useful than a 40-day ceasefire and the release of thousands of Palestinian prisoners?
But neither the article nor the headline have the tone you're talking about.
What are you basing that assumption on?
Edit: come to think of it, the opposite is very much the case: a 40 day pause will take the international pressure off Israel long enough that the media moves onto other things. Meanwhile, Palestinians are just as dead 40 days later but with a fraction of people still paying attention.
Yeah it is. It's basically the equivalent of being broke and jobless and selling your house for $5000. Sure, you can pay rent for a while with the $5000, but it's much less than the house is worth and when the money's spent, you're homeless AND just as penniless as you started out.
Only instead of a house, it's tens if not hundreds of thousands in civilian lives.
It's both: if they were serious, they wouldn't make such a ridiculously bad offer.
I wouldn't on that persisting, though, as public opinion both domestically and internationally is increasingly worsening for the Israeli government as sympathy for their victims grow and outrage at the many atrocities spreads.
Nope. The Israeli government won't stop at that.
Because the article and headline are muddling the waters after Israel has already (almost immediately) rejected the deal. Gaslighting isn't always about tone.
Too many factors to count. If you really want to get into a discussion about why Hamas benefits from a ceasefire more than Israel, we can - but I would prefer to keep this conversation on the issue of the negotiations as a whole.
If nothing else - the fact that Hamas has been trying to get a ceasefire deal out of the hostages and signalled a conditional willingness to accept a temporary ceasefire (though not on terms Israel finds acceptable) suggests very strongly that Hamas sees a ceasefire as beneficial to them.
Okay. So you don't sell the house. The house is foreclosed on. You get nothing.
What is the benefit?
Take a look at the Israeli government. Not the concept of Israel as a rational (if amoral) world actor. Take a look at who is making the decisions right now, and how their grip on power is still firm both by legal means (the Knesset, short of snap elections, will not be replaced anytime soon) and by manipulation of Israeli popular opinion (the majority of Israelis still overwhelmingly get their news from Israeli sources, which have engaged in a monstrous amount of self-censorship regarding the genocide in Gaza after Oct 7).
With that in mind, what, in the next few months, do you expect public opinion in foreign countries to do to shift those decision-makers? Realistically speaking?
You misunderstand. When I say "Wind up", I don't mean "The genocide stops". I mean "The genocide rapidly reaches completion." Once Rafah is taken, Israeli occupation of the Gaza strip is total once more, and they've already got massive 'humanitarian' camps to use as an excuse to starve and deport Palestinians.
Israel hasn't formally rejected the terms yet. It could very well just be posturing, especially since Israel sent negotiators back to Egypt after the announcement of Hamas's acceptance of the new deal. I think more likely it's stalling for time, but it's far from certain.