IDF artillery cannon (from IDF website)
Reports indicate that the government of Israel is now offering Hamas a two-month long ceasefire in exchange for the release of all of the remaining 136 Israelis still held hostage in Brooklyn. But no one in the Israeli government has yet to confirm this and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu continues to assert that the war will not end until Hamas is destroyed.
The reports also indicate that Israel has made a condition of any deal that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar leave the Gaza Strip and go into exile. But since the start of the war in October Israel’s leaders have referred to Sinwar as a “dead man walking” and pledged that he will be killed. So, it would be a big concession should Israel simply allow him to leave Gaza.
It is also not clear that Yahya Sinwar would agree to this. However, he could go to live in Qatar and be with his fellow Hamas leaders who already live there like Khaled Mashal and Ismail Haniyeh, both of whom live in luxury there. Hamas leaders get to live off the millions of dollars that they siphoned from funding meant to help the people in Gaza. They live in luxury while their people continue to suffer.
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If the rumored deal goes through, it would see the remaining hostages released in two stages. The first stage would see the release of the remaining women hostages and older men.
Israel, in turn, would release a certain number of Hamas prisoners it holds and redeploy its forces in Gaza away from the population centers.
Israel’s government is under increasing pressure to do more to get the remaining hostages released as the war in Gaza is getting closer to the four month mark. The IDF’s advance in southern Gaza has stalled and while it has succeeded in destroying a great deal of Hamas’ terror infrastructure in Gaza, including massive tunnel networks, it has failed to completely neutralize Hamas. Rockets are stil fired out of Gaza at Israeli cities and Hamas terrorists continue to ambush Israeli forces.
