SUBSIM Radio Room Forums - Hamas launches war on Israel

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- - Hamas launches war on Israel (https://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=256098)

https://www.nzz.ch/feuilleton/hamas-..._x_tr_pto=wapp

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A skewed concept of justice is now in vogue in the West. In the Western canon, this refers to the individual, and everyone is equal before the law, whether rich or poor, brown or white. In the left-wing narrative, however, the collective prevails, defined by pigmentation, origin, identity and, above all, victim status. Morality is selective. Some groups are more “equal”: blacks, Muslims, LGBTQ+. . ., but not the victims of yesterday such as Jews or, in America, the descendants of the Chinese who were kept like slaves during the construction of the railway. Justice is assigned, not weighed; It's not about good or bad behavior, but about favored minorities.

Israel says its jets attacked the Gaza house of Ismail Haniyeh, widely considered as the overall Hamas leader.

Haniyeh lives in Qatar - Israel says the house was being used as a Hamas meeting place.

Elsewhere, Palestinian media say around 50 people were killed by an air strike in the central Gaza Strip.

Israel hasn't commented on the strike, but says it targets Hamas infrastructure and minimises civilian deaths.

On Wednesday night, Israel continued its operation at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, which it says was being used as Hamas base.

US President Joe Biden says he is "mildly hopeful" about freeing more than 200 people being held hostage in Gaza.

After Munich 1972, the Israeli send assassination commandos worldwide to find and execute the leaders behind that terror plot.

Just a thought.

Israel says its troops have found the body of a second woman held hostage by Hamas, during a search close to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza.

Noa Marciano, a 19-year-old soldier, was one of about 240 people kidnapped by Hamas gunmen during the 7 October atrocities, which killed 1,200 people.

Israeli forces raided Al-Shifa hospital earlier in the week, believing it to contain a Hamas command centre - something Hamas denies.

Meanwhile, the UN says a lack of fuel means that it can no longer bring aid into Gaza from Friday.

People there are facing the "immediate possibility of starvation" with winter fast approaching, the UN World Food Programme says.

Mobile phone and internet services are down because of the lack of fuel, Palestinian telecoms companies say.

Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted Israeli forces have not been "successful" in minimising civilian casualties in Gaza - but blamed Hamas.

More than 11,500 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its retaliatory strikes, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.

All ICU patients in al-Shifa dead amid Israeli siege. Hospital director Muhammed Abu Salmiya told the news channel that the hospital had become a ‘prison’ and a ‘mass grave’. All patients in the intensive care unit of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital have died, its director told Al Jazeera Friday, on the third day of Israel’s siege of the enclave’s largest medical facility.

The hospital’s director, Muhammed Abu Salmiya, said there were 7,000 people in the hospital — patients, medical staff and those taking shelter — and that doctors were still working to help patients. Salmiya said the hospital had become a “big prison” and a “mass grave” for all those inside.

“We are left with nothing, no power, no food, no water. with every passing minute, we are losing a life. Overnight we lost 22 persons, [and] for the past three days the hospital has been kept under siege,” Salmiya was quoted as saying by Al Jazeera.

America’s ABC News had reported Wednesday that 43 of the 63 patients in the ICU had died as oxygen ran out due to Israel’s siege. Dr Ahmed Mokhallalati, head of the hospital’s plastic surgery department, told the American news channel that they were burying bodies inside the hospital premises.

Hundreds of people are reported to have left Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City - the site that Israeli forces have been searching for days.

"We raised our hands and carried white flags," a journalist who left the hospital tells the BBC

He talks of gunfire and explosions overnight and says that bulldozers have dug huge holes in the hospital yard.

Doctors said the Israeli military ordered an evacuation but the IDF says it facilitated a safe route out after a request from the hospital director.

The Hamas-run health ministry says 120 patients remain at the hospital, along with premature babies - the BBC can't confirm the figures.

Israel accuses Hamas of running a command centre under the hospital - it has shown pictures of an alleged tunnel shaft and weapons as evidence so far.

Mark Regev, an advisor to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, earlier told US media that Palestinians should leave the southern city of Khan Younis for their safety.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 12,000 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its campaign against Hamas..

Israel and Hamas reach tentative U.S.-brokered deal to pause conflict, free dozens of hostages

A five-day pause in fighting, monitored by aerial surveillance, could see dozens of women and children freed from captivity in Gaza, according to people familiar with the terms of the agreement Israel, the United States and Hamas have agreed to a tentative deal that would free dozens of women and children held hostage in Gaza, in exchange for a five-day pause in fighting.
The release, which could begin within the next several days — barring last-minute hitches — could lead to the first sustained pause in conflict in Gaza, according to people familiar with its provisions.

Under the terms of a detailed, six-page agreement, all parties to the conflict would freeze combat operations for at least five days while an initial 50 or more hostages are released in smaller batches every 24 hours. It was not immediately clear how many of the 239 people believed to be in captivity in Gaza would be released under the deal. Overhead surveillance would monitor movement on the ground to police the pause.
The stop in fighting is also intended to allow a significant increase in the amount of humanitarian assistance, including fuel, to enter the besieged enclave from Egypt.
The outline of a deal was put together during weeks of talks in Doha, Qatar among Israel, the United States and Hamas, indirectly represented by Qatari mediators, according to Arab and other diplomats. But it remained unclear until now that Israel would agree to temporarily pause its offensive in Gaza, provided the conditions were right.
A spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in Washington said late Saturday that “we are not going to comment” on any aspect of the hostage situation.
Concern about the captives — two of whom Israel said were found dead — along with the rising number of Palestinian civilian casualties have steadily increased pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. More than 100 countries — but, notably, not the United States — have called for a full and immediate cease-fire.
The decision to accept the deal is difficult for Israel, said one person familiar with the situation who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations. While there is strong domestic pressure on Netanyahu to bring the hostages home, there are also loud voices in Israel demanding that the government not barter for their release.
In public remarks, Israel has remained unyielding, while acknowledging the pressure it is under. On Friday, Israeli National Security Council head Tzachi Hanegbi told reporters that the war cabinet had unanimously agreed that a limited cease-fire could occur only after “a massive release of our hostages … and it will be limited and short, because after that we will continue to work towards achieving our war goals.”
In fiery comments Saturday, Netanyahu said the offensive would continue, even as he defended a decision last week to allow the first steady fuel transfers into Gaza since the start of the war. As Israel has pursued its Gaza offensive, it has cut off all but minimal deliveries of the food, water, fuel and medicine that the enclave’s 2.3 million people depend upon for survival. “For international support to continue, humanitarian aid is essential,” he said. “Because of that, we accepted the recommendation to bring fuel into Gaza.”
Netanyahu spoke as thousands of hostage families and their supporters ended a five-day march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to demand government action, with many saying that the lives of innocent Israelis were worth any short-term deal the government has to make to secure their release.

After initial hesitation, the Biden administration, under its own domestic pressure between advocates of unstinting support for Israel’s war aims and concern over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, has fully backed a temporary pause in the fighting. Beginning with President Biden’s trip to Tel Aviv a week after the war began, and followed by multiple visits from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior officials, the administration has pushed hard with Netanyahu to understand that it is losing the narrative high ground as more Palestinians die. The death toll in Gaza is now reportedly more than 11,000.
The administration’s highest priority, however, has been freeing the nine Americans and one permanent U.S. resident among the hostages. “I think we need a pause,” Biden said two weeks ago at a campaign event. “A pause means time to get the prisoners out.”
A week later, asked about reports he had pushed for a three-day stop in the fighting, Biden said he had asked Netanyahu for “an even longer pause.” In his news conference Thursday after meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he said the hostages were “on our mind every single day,” and that he was working on a way to “have a period of time where there’s a pause long enough” to let them be released.
U.S. officials have said they believe a pause would allow Hamas to gather the hostages and arrangements could be made to escort them safely through the battlefield. It was not clear that the Americans or other foreigners would be included in the initial tranche of releases. The hope is that if the release of women and children is successful, other groups of captives will then follow.
Brett McGurk, the White House National Security Council’s top Middle East official, is on an extended trip to the region to try to solidify the hostage release plan, including meetings in Israel and Qatar. Speaking at an international security conference Saturday in Bahrain, McGurk said that negotiations have been “intensive and ongoing.”
The freeing several weeks ago of an American mother and daughter — among the four captives that have been released since the war began — during a briefly agreed pause to allow international humanitarian workers to escort them, provided a “track” for “what we hope will be a much larger release.”

McGurk told the conference that Hamas’s release of a “large number” of the hostages, believed to total 239, “would result in a significant pause in fighting and a massive surge of humanitarian relief. Hundreds and hundreds of trucks on a sustained basis entering Gaza from Egypt.” When the hostages are released, he said, “you will see a significant, significant change.”
It was “reasonable,” McGurk said, “to pause the fighting, release the hostages, the women, the children, the toddlers, the babies, all of them.” The initial deal does not include civilian men or Israeli military personnel, a number of whom are women, among the captives.
Those remarks drew an angry response from Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who interpreted them as signaling that a pause allowing humanitarian relief would come only after the hostages were released unconditionally by Hamas. “There’s a lot of negotiations,” Safadi said, “but Israel is taking 2.3 million Palestinians hostage … and denying them food and water and by this war.”
An administration official said any assumption that the United States was conditioning aid on the release of hostages had “grossly misinterpreted” McGurk’s remarks. “Any type of hostage deal would likely result in an increase of humanitarian aid,” the official said. The United States, the official noted, has continuously pushed for an increase of humanitarian assistance to civilians in Gaza. https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...ozens-hostages

The United States is working hard to reach an agreement for a temporary cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, but an agreement between Israel and Hamas is not yet in place. A White House spokesman let that be known following reports by "The Washington Post" that a tentative agreement had been reached.

Qatar PM says only "very minor" obstacles to hostage release deal remain and these are mainly practical and logistical issues.

Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu says nothing has yet been agreed and ruled out a full ceasefire, the White House says officials are working to agree a deal.

Earlier the Washington Post reported that Israel, Hamas and the US were close to agreeing the release of some hostages in return for a pause in fighting.

The World Health Organization says 291 critically ill patients including 32 babies are still at al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after many Palestinians evacuated on foot on Saturday.

The Palestinian news agency Wafa says 13 people have been killed in an Israeli air strike on Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza and two others in a strike on Khan Younis.

The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says more than 12,300 people have been killed in the territory since Israel began its campaign against Hamas..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQohveZYJs4