Truce or reformation? Why did the parties in Gaza decide to exchange hostages?
The reason for writing this material was the ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. This agreement is presented by many media as the first step towards ending the carnage in Gaza. I’ll say right away that I do not share the optimism of journalists from such publications. Neither Hamas nor Israel have said they want to end the war.
A truce is necessary for both sides to bring order to their own armed formations, which were pretty battered during the month and a half of hostilities. Both sides are not ready to fight a long-term war without outside help. Let me remind you that most of Israel’s wars are short-term skirmishes. And what was a more or less long war, like the war with Egypt, actually came down to periodic shelling of each other, nothing more.
Alas, the peaceful citizens of Palestine and Israel today are just a “means of payment” that the parties use to solve understandable problems in the military and domestic political spheres. The Israeli leadership needs war to maintain power. Without a real victory, Netanyahu will not sit in his warm chair for long.
The Hamas leadership also needs a war in order to drag other Arab, and better yet, Islamic states into the conflict. Sunni Hamas is trying to drag Shiite Iran into the war... In general, Hamas today, to some people this will come as a surprise, is undermining the unity of NATO. And for this he uses Turkey as a natural ally of his organization. "Muslim Brothers"...
At the very beginning of the war, I wrote that in this conflict we do not need to support either side. Israel, while maintaining a “kind smile on its face,” is actively helping the Kyiv regime. Hamas... So ask the guys who fought in Afghanistan in the last ten years, how many representatives of this organization they saw among the Mujahideen... And those who happened to know what the Syrian sun is can answer this question...
And in general, Hamas is the fosterling of Israel, which was created to confront Yasser Arafat’s PLO. True, initially outwardly it looked like just another charitable organization, but... Let me remind you of one episode from stories Israel, in which all the parties mentioned are involved.
1984 Israeli intelligence services learned about a weapons warehouse that belongs to Hamas. At that time, this operation was presented as an achievement of Israeli specialists. But today no one hides the fact that information was leaked to the Israelis by members of the PLO. The warehouse was discovered in one of the mosques. The imam was arrested, but... released. Do you know why? Yes, he simply stated that weapon he needs it to fight OOP!
It doesn’t take a lot of brains to assume that after the truce the conflict will subside. I think the opposite will happen. By regrouping, both sides will intensify the confrontation. The war will flare up with renewed vigor. The media writes that mass demonstrations against the war are taking place in Israel, but they forget that exactly the same demonstrations are taking place “for complete victory over Hamas.” Society is divided. According to American estimates, whether you agree with this or not is up to you, 85% of Israelis are in favor of war!
And one more statement struck me. Today, most Israelis proudly declare that the most important thing for their country is the lives of its own citizens. By the way, many of our politicians use such statements to increase their own ratings. Look, Israel is not Russia!..
But how then can we understand Netanyahu’s words about ten hostages in one day of extension of the truce? A month and a half ago, I wrote that the Israeli leadership does not care about its hostages. It doesn’t matter how many of them are released. If they save one, that’s good. If they save a hundred, that’s also good. They won’t save you, well, it’s the terrorists’ fault. I wonder what is stopping Netanyahu from not shooting until all the hostages are released? Burning under your own ass?
Why wasn't the agreement concluded earlier?
A completely legitimate question is why the issue of hostages has become so acute for Israel right now? Why was there no talk about exchange from the very beginning of the war?
I will express my point of view on this issue. It was important for Tel Aviv to gain an advantage. It is a military advantage. To speak from a position of strength.
In principle, an analogy with the actions of Kyiv this year simply suggests itself; this is a common practice of the Israelis in all previous wars. Present the enemy with the fact of his own superiority and force him to accept his own conditions. When concluding this agreement, we saw this with our own eyes. Netanyahu allowed himself to dictate the terms of the continuation of the truce.
Please note, returning to what was written above, no one is talking about the end of the war. Neither Israel nor Hamas even mention this. One side talks about the complete destruction of the enemy, which is impossible in principle, if only because the Hamas leadership is not in Gaza. The Israelis, by killing ordinary Palestinians, pretend that they are killing the organization itself. The task is to remove the entire population from Gaza and liberate the territory...
There is another analogy with Ukraine. Do you remember how Jews and Palestinians lived before the war began? Many Arabs worked in Israel, lived in Israel. The peoples coexisted quite peacefully with each other. What happened after October 7? Jews and Palestinians suddenly forgot everything. Suddenly they hated their neighbors with a fierce hatred.
I mentioned 85% for a reason. After all, among these people there are those who not only coexisted, but were also friends with the Arabs. We see approximately the same thing in Ukraine. I’m not talking about the soldiers at the front, I’m talking about those who are allegedly under bombing by the Russian Aerospace Forces. They have never been bombed, but they are “under bombing.”
Basically. I understand why this happens. The task of propaganda is to make the enemy the enemy of the entire people. In this way, you can ensure your own superiority in motivation and increase morale at the front and in the rear. If people do not have a sense of superiority over the enemy, the enemy will act more boldly. The Germans demonstrated this to us perfectly in 1941-1942.
If you look at the Israeli press today, you will notice how the rhetoric of the materials has changed. Now the main trend of articles has become a quick victory over terrorists. “Hamas’s days are numbered...”, “terrorists are fleeing Gaza...” and so on. This is what caused so many supporters of the war. Everyone wants to feel at least somehow involved in the victory.
"America is our everything..."
According to open sources, Israel has already spent $45 billion on the war. A third of this amount will be compensated by the United States. That is, Washington took on part of Israel's military expenses. In principle, Israel receives significant sums from America every year. So US sponsorship is nothing new.
Military support is a completely different matter. Direct participation of the American military in the war. It is no secret that the Americans actively help the IDF in the field of intelligence. American planes circle the combat area almost constantly. The Pentagon is somehow silent about this.
How can Americans help? I have already written about the fact that the Marines located on the ships of aircraft carrier groups are not able to somehow change the course of the war. And here aviation can be of significant help. In the absence of any serious air defenses for Hamas, aviation became almost the decisive factor in Israeli victories.
Recently, information appeared in the press that the almighty Wagner company intervened in the matter. True, Western intelligence services could not provide a single fact. Let me explain what the point is. The musicians allegedly handed over SA-22 Greyhound systems, known to us as Pantsir-1S, to Hezbollah. The “duck” helps the Americans not comply with the Israeli demands for practical assistance. The Pentagon remembers who “sent” their Reaper UAV in the Black Sea.
The same story happens with the second aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford. It seems that he is ready to go to the shores of Israel, but something always gets in the way, like the famous dancer from the joke. The Pentagon has been “preparing the group” for almost two months... Overall, this looks extremely ridiculous. “We have a fist that we can punch with. But he’s not ready to strike yet,” something like that.
To be continued, but which one?
I don’t think that when Netanyahu launched such a response to the attack by Hamas terrorists, he understood that the war could drag on so long. At the beginning of the war, I wrote about how the Israeli intelligence services and the IDF shamefully failed in their work. But could this have happened without the knowledge of Israel's main ally? Does anyone else not know where the Hamas leadership sits? Does anyone doubt that Qatar is an ally of the United States?
I will express a seditious thought: everyone knew everything, and the conflict was beneficial both for the United States, which needed to “leave gracefully” from Ukraine, and for Netanyahu, under whom the chair not only swayed - it cracked, and for Hamas, which they began to forget about. Everyone wanted a quick war. But…
The plan failed. Exactly the same thing happened as in Ukraine. Instead of a quick victory, the war became quite protracted and costly. Nobody knows how to finish it yet. We need a victory. But any victory for the Israelis will be Pyrrhic...
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