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Weekly Israel-Hamas war megathread - week of July 8
This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant Israel-Hamas war content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.
Please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.
I'm coming in a little ignorant as I've been trying to take a little time away from the deluge of depressing news from the Israeli invasion, but when they say:
I was under the impression that Hamas had accepted the deal pitched by Biden and Israel, after being the ones to pen it had refused to agree to it. Was that not true or has something changed? Is there a new proposal on the table that is more friendly to Israel's position?
I know I'm coming with a bias of having friends both killed by and heavily effected by the conflict, but it seems like this is kind of a soft justification of the insane destruction Israel has been deal out in Gaza.
Like Interesting mentions, it's that both sides are claiming they have "accepted" different deals. This has happened a lot of times since 10/7, and typically what is going on is that the one Israel says it has accepted is not actually a ceasefire. The main thing you're probably remembering here is that a month or two ago Hamas proposed a deal where they would give Israel all the hostages back for nothing in return except a ceasefire, which led Biden to publicly announce that he had brokered a successful ceasefire deal with Hamas, but he jumped the gun and Israel rejected it. The stated reason was because Hamas refused to guarantee the hostages would be returned alive, but, as you're probably aware, Hamas is not in a position to guarantee all the hostages will be returned alive -- and in fact it knows many won't be -- since Israel has already killed most of them.
As for what the terms in the current ceasefire proposal are, one of the big ones is that Israel doesn't have to stop fighting until their "objectives" are achieved. So at this point what Israel is looking for in a ceasefire deal is explicitly one where they can keep firing but Hamas can't fire back. Which is pretty friendly to Israel's position of course. Obviously Hamas can't sign that or they would be signing the death warrants of everyone still alive in Gaza, so this is just a nice little detour to keep the diplomats busy not working on a ceasefire while things continue apace.
I think there’s also a question of whether it’s just a temporary ceasefire (the war could resume later) or whether it will lead to a more lasting peace treaty. This is what they mean when they say Hamas was holding out to “end the war.”
A temporary ceasefire, where both sides stop fighting while they negotiate further, would be a big win from a humanitarian perspective, but the problem (from the point of view of the participants) is that such negotiations often don’t lead anywhere.
Oh, yeah, once you pass the threshold matter of whether Israel has to stop firing at all, you hit that question of how long they have to stop firing for, which has caused a lot of trouble. Those "humanitarian pauses" or temporary ceasefires or whatever we're calling them now would undeniably help everyone in Gaza in the short term (assuming Israel actually follows them, which there is endless historical reason to doubt). But Israel has continually demanded that even a temporary stop to the bloodshed will cost Hamas literally all of the bargaining chips they have left. So when the fighting starts again it'd be impossible to imagine it ever stopping until everyone in Gaza is finally dead, particularly since at that point they wouldn't even have to worry about the minor domestic political consequences of getting caught killing hostages again.
Can you link the incident where Biden jumps the gun on a "successful ceasefire deal"? The most I've found is one where Biden announces a proposal knowing full well that the Israelis had not agreed, but it was quite obvious in all media at the time that 1) it was a proposal only and 2) the Israelis were not a part of the announcement unusually because Biden had done this unilaterally.
Then there's also the time Hamas claimed they accepted a proposed deal only for it to be clear 24 hours later it was a proposed deal by a third party that Israel had not agreed to. In that case, the Biden admin was cautious and clear on that.
Oh, no, I wasn't referring to an actual successful ceasefire deal, I was referring to how Biden pitched it that way. It wasn't a successful ceasefire deal. When I said he "jumped the gun", I was referring to him declaring mission accomplished when it wasn't and he hadn't asked Israel if they signed on first. It wasn't ever going to be a successful ceasefire deal because the only thing Israel wants out of this war is taken off the table if there is a ceasefire.
Yes, I'm asking where Biden claims it was a successful deal.
Oh, just read any of the articles announcing it, e.g. the one linked in the article you just posted.
This was the narrative out of the White House up until Israel announced that actually they didn't agree. I have no idea how I would find clips from cable news shows, but the narrative on CNN and MSNBC in that period was that Joe had diplomatically ended the war lol
That is, at best*, a misleading statement from Biden that Israel was ready to go on that specific proposal, but even within the title of the article you link it says proposal. That is a very far cry from what you claimed initially:
*At best because the US later claims that Israel had agreed to it, and it's not impossible that Netanyahu backed out last second and denied ever backing it. Also not impossible that elements within the Israeli government were poised to accept with Netanyahu killing it alone. With the public infighting happening in Israel right now, that is a real probability.
From one perspective, Israel backing out so quickly shows that the Biden administration should have gotten more confirmation from the Israelis before going public.
On the other hand, it's possible that the Biden administration did that intentionally - maybe they thought that the Israelis would feel more pressure to agree if a potential deal were public? If so, it didn't work.
It could also be an explanation for the leak in the article I just shared. Someone leaked this. What's their motivation? It might a third party pressuring Hamas to make a deal. A leak might also be in the interest of the people in Hamas who wrote the letters, for internal political reasons. (They would probably need to do it in a deniable way, with the third party's help.)
But that's just speculation. I think all it shows is that what's in the news isn't enough to know what's going on behind the scenes.
Possibly the pressure did work (if the move was intended to pressure). We're one month removed and since then, Gantz has left the coalition over non-progress, the military has voiced its frustrations with the current plan and now backs a ceasefire, and we're closer than ever to seeing a ceasefire deal accepted by both sides.
Did the move in June succeed or fail in generating pressure? I don't think we can really tell for certain.
Yeah, you're right. We don't know. It could also have different effects than originally intended.
Yeah, like I said, it was marketed as a proposal that Hamas and Israel had accepted. It's not clear to me what if any distinction you're trying to draw here. Also:
This is simply untrue, as US officials -- again, in the link you posted -- say that Israel was never even asked about the deal. In the nicest way possible I don't think you're very familiar with what happened.
My last attempt to get through here, but it clearly wasn't marketed as a proposal that Hamas and Israel had accepted because then the headlines wouldn't say "proposal". It clearly wasn't marketed as "a successful ceasefire deal" either because otherwise the headlines wouldn't say "proposal".
You know what a successful ceasefire deal is? When both Israel and Hamas have both decided to stop shooting. Did both do so? Did both claim to? Did Biden say both did? No to all.
Conclusion: Biden never claimed he brokered "a successful ceasefire deal".
"Senior U.S. officials" said both claimed to, yes.
Senior officials said that it had been sent for review, not that it had been accepted.
I genuinely don't know how to get past whatever is going on here. It has become very difficult to even imagine much less assume good faith, and at that point on Tildes I would usually stop responding. Instead I'll just suggest that you see the above linked articles that you pointed us to if you would like to see proof of the exact opposite of your claim being true. I'm choosing to believe what the news articles say instead of what you are saying. I'm sorry. I still don't know what you were originally trying to suggest I was being dishonest about. If this really is purely some kind of semantic argument on your part, then I'm also sorry but I do not see too many shades of difference between a proposed deal accepted by all parties and a deal.
I want to be careful here. I don't think you're being dishonest. What I think is happening is that we're both interpreting a statement differently. I think the section of the article you posted is potent, but it may be interpreted in a couple of different ways. For reference, here's the quote:
In my opinion, I'm focusing on these sections:
Here, I would read it as they're expecting it to be accepted, but they're not promising it to be accepted. They're forecasting it. They were wrong, and that's on them.
However, I believe that the other user (u/gary) and I are both taking issue with your statement of:
It's splitting hairs, but he announced that he thought it would be successful, where I'm interpreting your statement as Biden's saying it already was successful.
Have a great day!
It's happened a couple of times that it's been claimed that one party or another "accepted" a deal, and it seems like every time (excluding November) the reality was that they accepted some modified version with a poison pill in it. At this point, I just assume any announcement of an accepted deal is false.
Gaza destruction likely helped push Hamas to soften cease-fire demands, several officials say (AP)
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U.S. military fails to reconnect Gaza pier, says mission will end soon (Washington Post)
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I don't have much to add to what was already said, but I do have one strong dislike to acknowledge: this thread's title. I don't think you can call this war being "against Hamas" without too much bias, at least for my taste. This is a continuation of a long war between Israel and Palestine.
This has been discussed to death, here and elsewhere, and I don't think there is anything else productive to say on the topic. If you'd like to see this discussed exhaustively, I recommend looking at the Wikipedia talk page requests to move
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war