Hostage and ceasefire update

[onegrumpyoldwoman]

Efforts are still underway to reach an agreement for the release of hostages and a ceasefire. Despite hopes that Hamas had ‘agreed’, significant gaps remain:
Hamas cannot guarantee how many of the 33 female soldiers, sick and elderly are still alive.

Hamas refusing Israel’s insistence to have a veto over certain heavyweight terrorists that will be released in exchange.

The sequencing of the deal: how may hostages will be released after how many days.

Hamas are also seeking a longer pause: 12 weeks as opposed to 6 in an effort to end the fighting completely – something Israel will only consider for the release of all the hostages.

Hamas continues its psychological warfare, releasing another hostage video, the third in a month.

In Rafah, Israel is thus far limiting its operations to pinpoint missions. Concern for the safety of any hostages being held in Rafah, along with the over one million civilians, is allied to a desire to reduce tensions with Egypt which have been inflamed over Cairo’s opposition to any operation in Rafah.

Israel's attack on Rafah isn't helping the negotiations at all.

www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/gaza-ceasefire-deadlocked-as-israels-rafah-attacks-set-talks-backward

Update -

Sirens sounded in northern Israel yesterday after two anti-tank missiles crossed from Lebanese territory into the area of Yiftah. Three IDF soldiers were lightly injured and one moderately injured.

The IDF struck several targets in southern Lebanon in response, including in Odaisseh, Khiam, and Kafr Kila.

In southern Israel, initial reports of sirens sounding in communities in the Gaza envelope proved to be a false alarm, while several launches identified from Gaza fell inside the Strip, with no Israeli injuries reported.

One UN employee was killed and another injured in Rafah yesterday. The IDF said that their vehicle’s route was unknown to Israel and that they were hit “amid fighting in an area defined as an active combat zone.”

Meanwhile, the Iranian-backed Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed responsibility for launching two UAVs at what they claimed to be a "military target in Eilat."
IDF fighter jets successfully intercepted them before they entered Israeli territory.

Funny how there’s been no publicity for the UN’s admission that the figures for the numbers of deaths in Gaza are totally wrong and super inflated. 11000 women and children have been brought back to life. Hamas are delaying a cease fire because they don’t want the world to know the state of the surviving hostages. Cameron has now said they should be called Terrorists and they are. Don’t ever think they will stop with Israel and the Jews.

I'm not too sure what point you are trying to make but my update shows that Hamas are still (accidentally) firing rockets at their own citizens.

What an ill informed post, and glib about the deaths of thousands of women and children at that. You ought to be ashamed.

Maybe read the report before you go around spreading dangerous disinformation.

This is a very disrespectful comment. Some of the posters here have innocent family and friends whose rotting corpses are decomposing under the rubble or who have been blown to bits. It took weeks for Israel to identify the victims of 7/10, which were about 20 times fewer and not in an active combat zone.

The estimated death toll of 35,000 remains the same.

They have formally identified 24,686 individuals. The others have not been identified- injuries, decomposition, buried under tons of rubble, dumped in a mass grave in a hospital compound or elsewhere, disinterred by the Israelis searching for hostages.

Of those individuals identified , it looks like about 10,000 were potential combatants because 4,959 were women and were 7,797 children and 1924 elderly. Yes-7797 children!

It suits Hamas to talk up the civilian casualties and it suits Israel to talk up the number of Hamas fighters to justify its actions. Israel was warned that it would not be possible to militarily eliminate Hamas or rescue the hostages and it has failed miserably. Revenge and depopulation of Gaza and occupation of the Holy Land from the Med to the Jordan are not palatable war objectives to present to its US paymasters but they are key objectives of the coalition partners that keep Netanyahu clinging to power. Obviously Isreal wants to make it look like they are 70-80% finished and it was all a great idea-“ vote for us because we are tough”. Meanwhile Hamas is struggling to find living hostages to barter with and has reconstituted. Hamas is reported to be restarting Sharia courts and getting garbage collection started in the parts of Gaza that IDF thought they’d cleared.

We have many eye witness accounts from medics and in general the child and noncombatant deaths seem excessively high in their experience

Furthermore, these statistics don’t take account of excess deaths overall- for example two kids died from heat stroke at the end of April from living in plastic tents, people needing dialysis treatment a few times a week, diabetics etc
The British Medical Journal reported in February “If the war against Hamas continues its current path or escalates the number of excess deaths in Gaza will rise to between 58 260 and 74 290 in the months up to 6 August—with traumatic injuries and infectious diseases being the main causes of additional fatalities, according to new independent projections. If epidemic diseases such as cholera occur then excess deaths may exceed 85 000.”