Israel has agreed to a condition laid out by Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar to halt Israeli UAVs in the Gaza airspace for six hours on each day of the ceasefire in exchange for the release of some of the hostages under Hamas’s captivity, according to a Tuesday report by Walla.
The condition’s implementation was addressed by an Israeli official who cited statements made by the IDF and Shin Bet, stating that they have intelligence-gathering capabilities even during the ceasefire days. “We will not be blind and we’ll know what’s happening on the ground,” the official said.
The deal for the hostages’ release that will be submitted to the government for approval includes the release of 50 Israeli children and women during a four-day ceasefire and includes the possibility of it being extended if Hamas locates additional women and children, with ten freed for each additional day of the ceasefire.
It is estimated that the total of those freed may reach 70-80 women and children if Hamas does locate the hostages, as they claimed they do not know some of their locations.
“Hamas, as far as we are concerned, needs to bring the people back, including from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other elements,” said the official, also saying that Hamas should also release additional hostages with foreign citizenship, but not as part of the outline for the release of Israeli women and children.
The deal to release the hostages has the support of the IDF, Shin Bet, and the Mossad, and includes the release of about 140 security prisoners from Israeli prisons. According to the official, Israel insisted that prisoners convicted of murder not be included in the list of those released. The outline also states that during the days of the ceasefire, Israel will allow more fuel to be brought into the Gaza Strip – however, the official made it clear that this is a relief that will only last during the ceasefire.
The deal to release the hostages was opposed by the Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-774446
Comment: I can understand the ceasefire and the hostage exchange, but the demand for ceasing Israeli drone operations for six hours a day puzzles me. Are the reconnaissance drones that effective against Hamas operations? I do believe IDF and ShinBet claims that they have plenty of intelligence gathering capabilities so did they pull something over on Hamas or do the drones offer a unique and effective capability that can’t be duplicated?
I also find it telling that the Religious Zionist Party and Otzma Yehudit opposed the ceasefire and hostage exchange. To paraphrase Golda Mier, they hate the Arabs more than they love their children.
TTG
I believe her qoute is “peace will come when the Arabs love their children more than they hate us”. I was under the impression that Gaza has been surveiled by drones daily for years.
Yes, I think this was the correct quote. It is an important distinction.
“When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
― Golda Meir, A Land of Our Own: An Oral Autobiography
kj
Good Lord. Mrs Meir actually wrote this? “When peace comes we will perhaps in time be able to forgive the Arabs for killing our sons, but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons. Peace will come when the Arabs will love their children more than they hate us.”
If one reads that charitably, I think that’s called chutzpah. And off the scale. “We take your land by conquest. And when you resist you force us to kill your sons. How could you do that to us?”
Read uncharitably, it reads “Resist and we kill your children. Your fault,”
Either reading is repellent. “… but it will be harder for us to forgive them for having forced us to kill their sons.” says Mrs Meir. The twisted thinking behind such statements is all the more repellent for being couched in such sanctimonious terms.”
I prefer those who just come straight out with it. “We want your land and we’ll kill you if you stop us taking it.” Not that coming straight out with it can be much consolation to the Palestinian farmers being driven off their land right now.
EO,
I don’t know, but I don’t read it as, “We want your land and we’ll kill you if you stop us taking it.”
I could, instead, charitably be read as, “You guys won’t accept that we have procured the bulk of the Palestine/Israel fair and square via legal purchase from those who had the right to sell to us and we developed a mostly wasteland into a nice place to live – and you have wanted to kill us from the river to the sea since the 1930s. So we must fight back in self-defense against you and that means killing your sons; something we are loath to do because it’s hideous and leaves a dark mark on our souls, but you leave us no choice”
Lest you think I’m making a sick joke, I assure you that I’m serious. Your perspective hinges on the oft repeated, but utterly unsubstantiated, meme that Jews somehow “stole” the land that is modern Israel. I don’t see how that is true. The Arabs sought to destroy the jews before 1948 and well before the Golan was kept as fortune de guerre (and high ground with strategic security value) and before the settlers began gobbling up outlying areas.
No right in the head civilized human *wants* to kill anyone; not even armed opposing soldiers. Sometimes it’s an ugly job that has to be done and it leaves the doer scarred. So your view also hinges on the idea that the Israelis are blood thirsty psychopaths; might as well just go all the way and start recycling old Nazi propaganda – blood sucking Jew rats and all that rot – because you’re pretty close to it at this point
The Zionists owned 7% of Palestine before the Nakba the rest was taken by force and between 450 to 500 villages were bulldozed, they did not procure it through legal means as you said, you just made that up.
Gordon Reed,
The made up history is the myth of the Nakba. As I have said, repeatedly, Arabs lost land each time they started a war to wipe out the Jews. What you and Arabs like to call the Nakba an example of of that. I think this article is a decent bit of scholarship on the matter. Bottom line; don’t start genocidal wars that you’re going to lose and then expect to regain rights and land from the people you fought and lost to.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/the-nakba-obsession
Gordon Reed,
Also, using percent of land owned is not a valid metric. Cities are smaller geographically, but the far more populated areas. Most of “Palestine”/Israel is inhabitable – or barely habitable – desert.
Where in “Palestine” were the Jews living pre-1948? What had they developed into prosperity?
E.O.
I knew that TTG’s paraphrase was antithetical to the context of what Golda Meir said. I do believe the Golda Meir comment fits the Yom Kippur War (timing).
When I want to understand someone, I need to put their words into their actual context (as much as I can) and then give it more thought.
This is an interesting article on the subject of Meir.
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/culture/article-756265
I have mixed thoughts on her as well.
kj
It’s a weird deal in a bizarre situation. The entire world has lost its mind. What about deliveries of poisonous donuts to maternity wards? They don’t suspend those, I’m not surprised though.
Mama Your Child Is Born. And 327 were Just Killed By Our Bombs. (Scroll right).
https://tinyurl.com/3z3rtemd
Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich are Kahanist. They are racists thugs. Itamar’s henchman is Bentzi Gopstein. His Lehava gang of punks is a violent Nazi Pogram. The US government need to place Religious Zionist Party, Otzma Yehudit, and Lehava on the terror watch list right along side the JDL and Kach party.
Scroll to the left.
https://tinyurl.com/584bdcxe
That’s us basically. Decent people trying to live. Or maybe it’s a convention of psychiatric nurses wearing pink hats gathered at the Waldorf Astoria.
But the guys you mentioned are actually worse than Bugsy Siegel, Meyer Lansky, Mickey Cohen, Arnold Rothstein, Berney Madoff, Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein on a bad day. Don’t forget the head of Murder Incorporated – Lepke Buchalter.
Not an awful lot of people are looking at the Gaza battle from a strictly military point of view. The military analysts are, as usual, out to lunch. Their idea of analysis of contemporary conflicts is to decide first of all who the Goodies are and who the Baddies, and tailor their analysis accordingly. People I used to think were pretty good like Lee or Kofman or Reisner turned out to be more information warriors than analysts. I expect the same will happen here.
As an Englishman I was quietly pleased that one of our own top Generals, General Lord Richards, avoided the information warrior trap. Whatever his sympathies were – I suspect they were neocon sympathies but that might be unfair – when he looked at a military problem he looked at it as just that. Balanced up the odds and arrived at a scrupulously dispassionate assessment.
I’ve yet to see that done in the case of the Gaza battle. Most are so keen on seeing their side win, whichever side that is, that they skirt round the military reality. So no guidance in this case from the military experts on the odds for and against Hamas and the odds for and against the IDF. All too busy breaking a lance themselves for one side or the other.
Putting aside all the political stuff and focusing on the strictly military a ceasefire, however it’s dressed up, might make sense for the Israelis. If they don’t demolish Gaza entirely, complete with its inhabitants, they’ll find themselves embroiled in straight Warsaw Ghetto fighting and I’m not entirely sure they’re up to it. Saw a reference to the Houthis yesterday. Some of those Houthis are supposed to be fighting in Gaza. If so, look out.
They look as if they’re pottering around without a care in the world but when it comes to small unit fighting they’re lethal. All the things that have to be laboriously taught to raw Western troops they seem to do by instinct. Saw it with the Chechens/Dagestanis too in the few videos I saw that came out of the fighting in Mariupol. Rumours that there are some of those in Gaza as well.
Unless they bomb them to hell and back first, or put in better quality troops than their average, the IDF will have its work cut out. Manning checkpoints or shooting the occasional unarmed farmer is poor preparation for coming up against fighters of that sort. Stroop, whatever we think of him, did at least have some seasoned and experienced units to do the job. We’ll have to wait to see whether Netanyahu has.
So what, one would like to ask the military experts, is the condition of the Israeli ground forces? Plenty of them, that’s established, but of what quality? Are they tough enough and experienced enough for this sort of fighting? Or is the IDF putting its money on long range demolition?
This man seems to have his head screwed on right when it comes to the strictly military side. It’s a start, anyway.
https://www.stimson.org/2023/unpacking-the-history-of-urban-warfare-and-its-challenges-in-gaza/
Only a start. He gets Fallujah wrong.
English –
Putin’s allies, Kadyrov’s Chechen units in Ukraine, have not been doing a lot of fighting. They are used more as blocking troops to keep Russian soldiers from retreating. They have also been used as military police deep in the occupied zones, far from the front lines, terrifying the locals. Plus they’ve cornered the black-market in stolen Ukrainian goods.
However the Chechens fighting for Ukraine, the volunteers in the Dzhokhar Dudayev Battalion, are on the frontlines. They have been engaged in intense fighting at Bakhmut, the counteroffensives at the battles for Izium & Kharkiv, and they helped to defend Kyiv in February/March 2022. They’ve have been doing some hard fighting. They certainly would not fight for Hamas.
I don’t think any Chechens will be going to Gaza to fight for Hamas. Although possibly Assad might use some Syrian-born Chechens to lob missiles at the Golan.
Best wait until the real facts come out on that one, Leith. As said, most of what the Western analysts put out is invention. At least, that was the case in Ukraine. Their line was, “What story shall we make up for our readers today?”
In the case of Gaza I don’t think we’re getting much better. Not so far, anyway. But Ukraine was so obvious and clear cut from the beginning. This one isn’t. We could do with another General Lord Richards type to take us through it all.
That Benny Morris material I linked to showed the Israeli dilemma. He’s fully on board with Israeli objectives but accepts that to get those objectives it’s ethnic cleansing or bust. How it is.
If I don’t sound sanctimonious myself, I do actually feel sorry for the Israelis as well as for the Palestinians. Both are equally victims of misconceived British policies in the ’20’s of the last century. We put the Israelis there in the first place. Looking back on it, damn silly place to put them. As in fact many far-sighted Brits said at the time!
This Gaza episode has thrown the Israelis right back on their heels. These days, ethnic cleansing is best done little bit by little bit. There are enough statements from Israeli politicians to show that for them, the unexpected Hamas terrorist attack looked like a heaven sent opportunity to accelerate the process. Their attempts to shift the Gazans to Egypt gave the game away in any case.
Trouble was, you can’t do that sort of thing in broad daylight, not these days. The Israelis were fools to think they could get away with it and they’ll be kicking themselves now for having tried. .
Your President’s in a jam too. He’s got the Christian Zionists on his back and that a constituency no American President can afford to ignore. At the same time, American and with it Western diplomatic credibility is circling the drain. On top of that he’s got his headbangers just dying to have a go at Iran. He seems to be holding the headbangers back at least, but do you reckon Biden and the Europoodles are going to come out of this looking good? I don’t.
Scarcely fair to call him Genocide Joe but it is fair to say that team Biden lost the plot on this one. They should have stopped the Israelis in their tracks on day one and we’re going to be looking at tens of thousands of deaths because they didn’t.
At least, that was the case in Ukraine. Their line was, “What story shall we make up for our readers today?”
We have all come a long way since 2001 and its aftermath. …
But there is hope for you on the horizon, EO, the Netherlands voted for a potential Nexit. Will they throw out all the Muslim too? Took Wilders a bit to manage that.
To be soon followed by other countries? Germany Höpke & Weidel in a coalition with Wagenknecht? Querfront? … Post ‘ex(c)iters’ too? Like Farage? Will he use his recent banking discrimination fame to found a party to take over in 2025? Even earlier? MAGA? A=Albion.
The world’s intuitive hyper-intelligent mastermind* will be reelected, of course. He will not allow anyone to steal his election this time.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-21/thanksgiving-donald-trump-anti-trump
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpsTa_dnSc
Farage wasn’t Mr Brexit, LeaNder. Nor was that rogue Johnson. My own Brexit guru, Richard North, who knows more about the EU than the entirety of the Commission put together, was Mr Brexit. Dr North’s early and acerbic assessment of those two was, it turned out, dead on target.
If you have any influence in Holland advise against any daring Colditz escapes from Brussels. Can’t be done. If attempted leads to condign punishment. You know, I suppose, that they walked off with our fish? The Dutch will have to do what the rest of Europe is doing and wait for the EU to fall apart.
As for Trump, please don’t mock my very stable genius. You could do with one in Germany. Barbarossa Scholz scarcely makes the grade. Early last year I was writing in to German commenters and telling them urgently that Scholz was bad news. He’ll do for you if you don’t get shot of him fast, was the message.
They wouldn’t listen and now look what’s happened. He’s done for you.
English –
I agree with your opinions regarding Israel.
As for the Chechens in Ukraine: I got that from Russkie milbloggers. Their Telegram accounts complain about the refusal of Kadyrovtsy to go anywhere near the frontlines. Not from Western analysts or media as you claimed.
You should learn how to survive in the media world of Putin’s fakes & dezinformatsiya. Don’t swallow his hook. Some of those Russkie milbloggers are starting to understand the incompetence of Shoigu and Gerasimov – and Putin’s nakedness underneath his cloak of lies. Russia could have won this war a year ago if they’d had more capable men in charge. They should retire, especially Putin. Russia and her long suffering people would be better off without him.
TTG,
I think Ray McGovern summarized very well why, no matter how many details are uncovered, you’ll never remove the confounding perplexity of this deal. On one of his video interviews. He said “c’mon, a humanitarian pause, really, .. during a genocide? Hello people! .. you mean we genocide, then we take a breather, a little break, and then we genocide again .. hello again folks.. ” .. In his inimitable style, I paraphrase but you get the idea, simply imagine old Ray’s lovely voice with his Mark Twain level humorous bconversational style, eyebrows raising, lips smiling and tonal inflections.
You’ve visited zoos and seen the monkey sections. How about nursery schools for autistic children or madhouses? Gaza is even more senseless.
Two items – 1&2 – they related, meaningful? Well, they both mention Lebanon. You can find the Litani river on a map.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litani_River
——————
1- Mysterious military flights between Israel, Lebanon continue
Sources suggest the planes originating from NATO countries carry equipment meant to weaken Hezbollah.
https://new.thecradle.co/articles-id/13238
———-
2- https://t.me/EvPanina/11866
Israel threatens UN with regional war.
Israeli media and TG channels reported an urgent appeal from the Israeli Foreign Minister to the UN Security Council. Eli Cohen demanded the withdrawal of Hezbollah across the Litani River in Lebanon in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution No. 1701 of August 11, 2006.
In his letter, the Israeli Foreign Minister threatened: if this resolution is not implemented in full, the situation will end in a regional war .
▪️ We are observing an obvious example of a selective approach to international law and decisions of the UN Security Council. For starters, Israel could set an example – and implement the UN resolutions on the creation of two states, with Palestine within the 1967 borders and with its capital in East Jerusalem.
Or that he comply with the laws of war during a ground operation in the Gaza Strip. Instead of demolishing all the objects and residential buildings along with the population. And at the same time, he did not launch air strikes on Syria from Lebanese airspace.
▪️ As for Hezbollah, it has little choice. To fight with Israel now, when Tel Aviv has another front in the south – in Gaza. Or later, when the Israelis deal with Gaza and take on Lebanon. That is, they will fight not on two fronts, but on one.
Thus, uncertainty regarding the scenario for developments in the Middle East remains. And the expansion of the conflict in Gaza to the entire region is quite possible
Any “equipment meant to weaken Hezbollah” is going to be destined for Walid Jumblatt and his private army … sorry, “Druze Militia”.
If the equipment was given to the Lebanese Army then it would end up being handed over to Hezbollah before it is even unpacked from its crate.
By marked comparison, the same equipment given to Walid Jumblatt is only going to end up with Hezbollah after they pay for it with serious amounts of money.
So there’s that, I suppose.
I would like to know how it is that women and children are “security prisoners”?
James –
They claim “security prisoners” are those that are being held under the “Illegal Combatants Law”. In addition to actual Hamas militants, it probably includes stone throwers, or anyone trying to stop their home or olive trees from being bulldozed, or anyone refusing to accept the orders of an IDF private or Israeli policeman.
Those security prisoners are a separate category than people from Gaza or the West Bank being detained for being in Israel illegally; or for political reasons.
leith
I thought these women and children were being held without charges and without trial. If they had broken a law wouldn’t they be charged and given some sort of trial – even one before a military tribunal?
James –
I’m guessing no legal process, so some sort of administrative detention. But I’m not privy to the Israeli justice system, so take my answer with a grain of salt.
leith –
If women and children are being locked up with “no legal process” then I think it is reasonable to refer to them as “hostages”.
James –
I heard on the radio yesterday that at least some of the Palestinian prisoners released had been tried and convicted. No clue as to how many.
Well, Israel can’t very well go round calling them “hostages”, can they?
Yeah, Right
Maybe this is why Israelis are not allowed to watch news media outlets that stray from the officially sanctioned narrative. And by “not allowed to watch” I mean they can be arrested and jailed if they watch proscribed content.
I mean – here in Canada I am not allowed to watch RT but at least they won’t put me in jail if I use a VPN.
It is a strange deal, indeed. I’m taking it at face value. The drones really are that good at detecting a particular Hamas planned activity, like movement of men and/or assets in a certain sector – or at least Hamas assesses the risk of detection to be high enough to seek to avoid it – and other Israeli detection methods are deemed, by Hamas, to not be nearly as effective in whatever scenario Hamas is planning.
So Hamas is just throwing it in Israel’s face that if hostages are to be released, then Hamas is going to be free to do what it wants for 6 hours a day. What choice does Israel really have? They must take the deal. Hamas probably feels very clever over that.
My SWAG is Hamas is wanting to withdraw men and gear to save them from the advancing IDF.
Off Topic? A moving article today in the Russian publication ‘Rodina’ on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of John F Kennedy’s murder in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963. Translated by not. Curiously or not the 10th anniversary of Maidan falls on the same day, today. Large geomagnetic storms were reported as being forecast yesterday evening.
Jacqueline Kennedy to Nikita Khrushchev: Thank your wife for her tears.
Archival documents related to the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy are being published for the first time.
https://tinyurl.com/chketces
The drones that Hamas is worried about are not necessarily the ones that gather intelligence. IMHO they are more concerned about the weaponized versions. And not just the grenade dropping FPV UAVs or loitering munitions such as the Harop. The Israelis have been using sniper rifles from drones. They reportedly use an advanced robotic stabilization & optics capability called Smash Dragon from Smart Shooter Ltd. The sniper’s art has advanced light years since Лейтенант Lyudmila Pavlichenko – or Morgan’s Riflemen or the hawk-eyed Natty Bumppo.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/terror-and-security/armed-drones-israel-hamas-war-gaza-hospitals-gunshots/
https://www.smart-shooter.com/products/
https://www.defenseadvancement.com/news/smash-dragon-armed-drone-system-launched/
Thanks. Chilling.
Seems a remarkably primitive system.
Why use a magazine for something whose main selling point is that you don’t need to have a person manning the system? Surely that is a situation just begging for a belt-feed.
An interesting article from the Israeli Times
Introducing the IAI Heron unmanned aerial vehicle (UAS)
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-774574
kj
Kj –
Heron is not just used for surveillance. They have an armed version also. The Israelis have used the armed version in Southern Lebanon in the past. Plus they were sold to both Azerbaijan and Turkey. The Azerbaijanis used them with deadly effectiveness in September against the Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and previously in the 2020 war. The Turks used them in the past to kill Kurds in both Syria and Iraq, before their Bayraktars came on line.
Leith
I was wondering if the IDF was ceasing all drones or just a few. It is difficult for me to think of that IAI Heron (UAS) as “only a drone’. “Lethal” is one word that comes to mind; “Sobering’ is another.
I did make a mistake in my post, however, that was the Jerusalem Post (JPost) article above.
kj
KJ –
It’s beyond my ken on whether or not the IDF ceased all drone use over Gaza. But gut instinct tells me no, they still are monitoring the situation with drones as well as other means. Although as I said up-post, I suspect they only ceased using killer drones like the SmashDragon & others. But they’d be fools to cease using recon & surveillance drones during the prisoner swaps.
jezz, if this prisoner swap takes place at all, even 5-people exchanged, I will be SHOCKED.
they have no intention of doing this, or if they do, they will then make sure to kill them all !!!
a little b.s. to keep the killing machine is order. tho, if anyone could use the break it will be the IDF, they don’t get our of their tanks, much less actual fighting@!!
AND, if i was hezbolla, the first thing i’d do is eliminate that US embassy!
False flag preparation or warning to Iran to behave? I sure don’t know but the likelihood that a competent terrorist leaves that sort of evidence is vanishingly small. There’s nothing more at the link than the text below except a still photo of the Rainbow bridge. Jokes on Ru comment sections were LGBT focused. Possibly a third party of the 4th estate interposed to plant false info re the passport for their own purposes.
https://t.me/infantmilitario/113395
It is reported that an Iranian passport in the name of the driver, Mohammed Mohammed, was found at the site of the Rainbow Bridge explosion.
NYT, Nov. 22, 2023: Rickie Wilson, a 65-year-old tour guide, said he had seen the speeding car leave the ground as it crashed.
“It hit a concrete barrier and went up,” he said. “It came down and hit an inspection booth.” He added: “I know I sound crazy, but the car was in the air. And not three or four feet in the air. It was like something you see in Hollywood.”
Mike Guenther, who was interviewed by local television station WGRZ-TV, said he was walking down Main Street in Niagara Falls, N.Y., with his wife when the car sped past them, headed toward a border checkpoint at the bridge. Mr. Guenther said the driver lost control after swerving to avoid a car ahead.
TTG: “I do believe IDF and ShinBet claims that they have plenty of intelligence gathering capabilities so did they pull something over on Hamas or do the drones offer a unique and effective capability that can’t be duplicated?”
The fiasco over the Israeli conviction that there was a Hamas command and control center under the al Shifa Hospital suggests to me that the IDF’s “other intelligence gathering capabilities” are not as plentiful nor as effective as they claim it to be.
That episode suggests to me that Hamas has infiltrated the IDF’s infiltration of Hamas, turning more than a few to feed misinformation to the Israelis.
Mossad: Are Hamas using the tunnels under al-Shifa?
Double-Agent: Oh, yeah, big time. It’s like a city under there.
Mossad: Hot damn, I knew it!!!
a thought; the IDF spokesperson went off-script (maybe there was no script) when asserting drone surveillance would proceed during the 6 hr combat pause. Hamas reaction (internal opposition) to scotch the deal had to be finessed. so, US offered sat
as adequate coverage. thus, Hamas is mollified, the deal proceeds, Hamas is no longer under close observation during the cease-fire. & the IDF retains overwatch, if limited to the nature of orbital platforms vs tactical drones devised for ops in dense urban terrain.
Here is an account of some high-tech, U.S.-made weapons being used in the Ukraine-Russia and Israel-Hamas conflicts:
“Israel’s appetite for high-tech weapons highlights a Biden policy gap
The Israel-Hamas war has brought a boom in cutting-edge military technology from U.S. makers — and a brewing diplomatic headache for the White House.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/25/israel-hamas-war-ai-weapons-00128550