Hamas offered as early as 9th October 2023 to release all civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering Gaza

...but Israel rejected the offer. In the meantime, Karim Khan urges ICC to issue arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant, while Israeli leadership keeps cracking and Israeli economy suffers.

From Al Mayadeen.

Yesterday, Friday 23rd August 2024, Al Mayadeen quoted a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) report, citing Arab mediators and a former Israeli negotiator, according to which…

Hamas had proposed releasing some captives, along with the bodies of two children and a woman, to extend the ceasefire last year. However, “Israel” rejected this offer.

At the time, “Israel” rejected the offer, demanding the release of all living civilian women it believed were being held by Hamas, according to the former Israeli negotiator involved in the talks, the WSJ reported.

The ceasefire that could have been extended last year and that the WSJ is referring to is the one that took place between 24th November and 30th November 2023. However, what the WSJ is failing to report is that Hamas offered as early as 9th or 10th October 2023, i.e. 2-3 days after the Al-Aqsa flood operation, to release all civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF (Israel “Defense” Forces) not entering the Strip, but Israel rejected the offer. This is what Haim Rubinstein, ex-spokesman of Families Forum in Israel, stated in April 2024 in an interview with the Times of Israel, which I recommend that you read in full (all emphasis mine):

Netanyahu talked about dismantling Hamas as the goal of the war. He didn’t promise anything regarding the demand to return the hostages. He merely said a military operation in Gaza was needed to serve as leverage for the hostages’ release.

We later found out that Hamas had offered on October 9 or 10 to release all the civilian hostages in exchange for the IDF not entering the Strip, but the government rejected the offer.

Of course, the WSJ or any other western news media outlet has never reported on this, as it would go against their narrative.

This means that, had Netanyahu accepted Hamas’s offer on 9-10 October 2023, more than 40,000 Palestinian lives could have been saved and all Israeli civilians hostages in the hands of Hamas would have returned home alive. Instead, most of the hostages are still held by Hamas, while Gaza is razed to the ground and the Palestinian people is subjected to a horrendous massacre.

This means also that all these ceasefire talks and negotiations in Qatar, Egypt, etc. are just a show, a smokescreen for the Outlaw US Empire to bring its navy asset in key areas in the East Med and Middle East to protect its vassal state in the region from retaliation from the Axis of Resistance and for Israel to buy time and carry on with the ongoing genocide.

From Fox News.

Speaking of genocide, the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) of Iran has reported today that Francesca Albanese, the United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories, has called once again for punishing Israel for its genocide and documented crimes in the Gaza Strip.

Francesca Albanese - from IRNA.

In the same IRNA article linked above, as well as in this Al Mayadeen article, there are reports that Karim Khan, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), is urging its judges “to decide on arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Security Minister Yoav Gallant, which he had requested months ago” and asking them “to dismiss legal challenges filed by several dozen governments and other organizations arguing that the ICC has no jurisdiction over Israelis who committed war crimes in Palestinian territories”.

ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan - from Al Mayadeen.

In the meantime, following the recent events in West Bank and Itamar Ben-Gvir's storming of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Ronen Bar, the head of Shin Bet, the Israeli Security Agency, issued a letter to senior Israeli officials, including Netanyahu and Gallant, but excluding Police Minister Ben-Gvir, warning them about the threat of “Jewish terror” from extremist settler violence in the occupied West Bank. This is how he started his letter, as reported by Al Mayadeen:

I am writing this letter to you with a heavy heart, filled with concern, as a Jew, as an Israeli, and as a member of the defense establishment, about the growing phenomenon of Jewish terror from “hilltop youth”.

As explained by Al Mayadeen…

The term “hilltop youth” refers to extremist Israeli settlers involved in establishing outposts in the West Bank deemed illegal even by the occupation authorities and frequently accused of carrying out violent attacks against Palestinian citizens.

Of course, Itamar Ben-Gvir did not like Ronen Bar’s letter and and asked for his dismissal during a recent security cabinet meeting, but, as per Al Mayadeen, Netanyahu and other ministers defended Ronen Bar. For Itamar Ben-Gvir the only terrorists are the Palestinians!

Head of Shin Bet, Ronen Bar - from Al Mayadeen.

And it is not just Ronen Bar, but also Israeli Brigadier General (Res.) Guy Hazut, who has recently said that Israel has lost its deterrence and has become “the beaten and humiliated kid among the children in the Middle East”, as reported yesterday by Al Mayadeen, quoting the Israeli news website Yedioth Ahronoth. In another Al Mayadeen article published today Israeli Reserve Major General Yitzhak Brik has been quoted as saying that Hamas's military capabilities are “very close to what they were before the war” and that the Israeli Chief of Staff, Herzi Halevi, “should be consigned to the dustbin of history”; he has also suggested that Israel should proactively “initiate a ceasefire and release the Palestinian detainees”.

The rift in Israeli political and military leadership is highlighted and summarized in this Al Mayadeen article today, citing various Israeli and American news media outlets, which are warning that Israel is not ready for full-fledged regional war and calling for a ceasefire that Netanyahu, Gallant, Ben-Gvir and Smotrick do not want, as it would be the end of their political career.

If all of this is not enough, the Israeli economy is deteriorating quickly. In fact, Al Mayadeen reports that… (all emphasis mine)

The Israeli occupation's economy slowed the most among the 38 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from April to June, as “Israel's” protracted war on Gaza continues to hinder its financial standing.

According to the OECD, “Israel experienced the most significant slowdown" as GDP plummeted from 4.1% in the first three months of the year to 0.3% in the second quarter.

[…]

In May, the OECD reduced the Israeli economy's growth prediction for this year to 1.9% from 3.3%, with a projected 4.6% in 2025. The Bank of Israel dropped its 2024 growth prediction to 1.5%, while the Finance Ministry expects 1.9% growth this year.

And it is not just OECD that reviewed its predictions of Israeli economy’s growth. As reported in the same Al Mayadeen article in the link above, JP Morgan has also cut Israeli growth outlook in 2024 from 1.6% to 1.4% and its 2025 prediction from 4.5% to 4.4%, with Fitch maintaining a negative outlook too and Citi warning of further rating downgrades, while leading economists say that the only solution to the ongoing economic problems is to end the war, but for Netanyahu the damage is just temporary.

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Meanwhile the Axis of Resistance keeps Israel on its toes. Three days ago Iran’s Permanent Mission to the UN in New York released the following statements (emphasis mine), as reported by IRNA:

The timing of Iran’s response will be meticulously orchestrated to ensure that it occurs at a moment of maximum surprise.

Iran’s response must punish the aggressor for its act of terrorism and infringements upon Iran’s national sovereignty.

…whereas two days ago the leader of the Yemeni Ansar Allah movement, Sayyed al-Houthi, said that the “resistance's ‘painful’ response [is] delayed for planning”, but will be “inevitable”, as reported in this Al Maydeen article.

Sayyed al-Houthi, leader of Yemeni Ansar Allah movement - from Al Mayadeen.

And yesterday Al Mayadeen reported in another article that the new Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned his French and British counterparts that Iran has not renounced to its right to respond to the Israeli killing of Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran almost one month ago.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi - from Al Mayadeen.

On the other hand, Hezbollah keeps trading fire with Israel across their border, with the latter killing prominent Hezbollah member Muhammad Mahmoud Naja yesterday, as reported by The Guardian. By the way, two days ago this rag came up with the following snippet regarding the video Hezbollah released on Friday 16th August and which I embedded at the end of my last article on the Middle East crisis: West Bank on Fire.

From The Guardian.

Wow…. it took them almost a week to examine a 4.5-minute video and say that most likely it is genuine and that it constitutes a “warning to Israel”!

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