There ARE negotiations going on between Israel and Hamas….
It IS making progress…
But still HAS a hill to climb…..
Second part below is a DEEP look by the New York Times into Benjamin Netanyahu’s political doings since the Oct. 7 attack’s…..
The Talks…..
President Trump is expected to meet on Wednesday at the White House with the prime minister of Qatar, which is hosting negotiations toward a cease-fire in Gaza.
Officials from Israel and Hamas have been holding talks in Doha, Qatar’s capital, to end the war in Gaza since July 6, but negotiations appear to have stalled.
After four days of talks in Washington last week with American officials, including Mr. Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel returned home on July 10 without finalizing a truce with Hamas.
Before his departure, Mr. Netanyahu released a statement sayingthat he was working toward a two-month truce in which Hamas would release up to 20 of the remaining hostages, and up to 30 bodies of those who died in captivity. But his statement also highlighted how key obstacles to an agreement remain in place.
In recent weeks, Israel’s Defense Ministry has promoted a plan to force much of Gaza’s population into a small zone in the territory’s south.
Hamas has cited the proposal as one of the latest obstacles to a new truce.
Hamas has a new leader in Gaza, Izz al-Din al-Haddad, who has insisted that any deal must pave a path to a complete and lasting cessation of hostilities. Mr. Netanyahu has said that he will agree to that only if Hamas’s military wing and government are dismantled.
Hamas and Israel do not negotiate directly. Officials from both sides are sitting in separate buildings as mediators shuttle messages and ideas between them, according to a diplomat with knowledge of the talks, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy.
Here is where things stand in the talks.
What Israel and Hamas are still negotiating:
…
How Netanyahu Prolonged the War in Gaza to Stay in Power
Secret meetings, altered records, ignored intelligence: the inside story of the prime minister’s political calculations since Oct. 7….
….
It was April 2024, long before Netanyahu mounted his political comeback. The proposal on the table would have paused the Gaza war for at least six weeks. It would have created a window for negotiations with Hamas over a permanent truce. More than 30 hostages captured by Hamas at the start of the war would have been released within weeks. Still more would have been freed if the truce was extended. And the devastation of Gaza, where roughly two million people were trying to survive daily attacks, would have come to a halt.
Ending the war would then have raised the chances of a landmark peace deal with Saudi Arabia, the Arab world’s most powerful country. For months, the Saudi leadership had secretly signaled its willingness to accelerate peace talks with Israel — as long as the war in Gaza stopped. The normalization of ties between the Saudi and Israeli governments, an achievement that had eluded every Israeli leader since the state’s founding in 1948, would have secured Israel’s status in the region as well as Netanyahu’s long-term legacy….
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