Hamas Rejects Two-Month Ceasefire in Exchange for Hostages
Also, 21 IDF soldiers killed in terror attack as fighting rages for the control of last major Hamas stronghold.
The terrorist group Hamas has rejected a generous Israeli ceasefire offer in exchange for the release of remaining hostages, media reports say. Israel had offered “a two-month cease-fire in exchange for hostages, and a free passage out of Gaza for its leaders,” the Israeli news website Ynet reported Tuesday.
The Associated Press, the news outlet that broke the story, cited an Egyptian official saying, “Hamas rejected the proposal and is insisting that no more hostages will be released until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws from Gaza.” The Israeli government did not comment on the news reports.
More than a hundred days since the October 7 attacks, over 130 Israeli hostages are still believed to be in Hamas captivity. Hostages, including women and children, are being kept in underground caged cells and subjected to torture, the recent IDF capture of a terror tunnels show.
The Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported:
Hamas has rejected Israel’s proposal for a two-month ceasefire, dealing a blow to negotiations seeking the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.
According to a senior Egyptian official, the deal involved freeing hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel.
Despite the potential for a significant breakthrough, Hamas insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before agreeing to release any more hostages. The Israeli government has not officially commented on the ongoing talks.
According to American media reports, sources revealed that Israel’s intelligence chief suggested the departure of senior Hamas leaders from Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire arrangement.
Hamas’s rejection of yet another Israeli ceasefire proposal shows how little regard the terror group has for the plight of Gazans, which it has been using as a human shield and cannon fodder. In early December, Hamas broke a hostages-for-terrorists deal brokered by the Biden administration and the Qatari government. The deal fell apart after Hamas refused to release captive Israeli women and children and resumed attacks on IDF troops in Gaza.
21 IDF soldiers killed in blast as fighting rages for control of Khan Younis terror stronghold
With Israeli soldiers encircling the last major Hamas stronghold of Khan Younis, Palestinian terrorists carried out the deadliest attacks since the Gaza offensive began nearly three months ago.
A Hamas RPG struck a building as IDF soldiers were preparing to demolish the structure, killing 21 of them. A nearby building also collapsed due to secondary explosions apparently caused by landmines recovered by the Israeli soldiers from the nearby areas, news reports indicate.
“It said the soldiers were preparing explosives to demolish two buildings on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a nearby tank, setting off the explosion prematurely and causing the buildings to collapse on them,” Sky News UK reported.
Shortly after the incident, the IDF confirmed the complete encirclement of Khan Younis, the last remaining major Hamas bastion where top terror commanders are believed to be hiding. The Hamas leadership is using the remaining Israeli hostages as human shields as they hide under miles-long terror tunnels.
President @Isaac_Herzog on the 21 fallen soldiers yesterday:
"Behind every name whose world has fallen apart – a family that we take to our hearts with sorrow and pain, and at the same time with pride – for the heroism of the generation." pic.twitter.com/HfxTJ7rcMv
— Arsen Ostrovsky 🎗️ (@Ostrov_A) January 23, 2024
The Jerusalem Post reported the details of the tragic attack:
The IDF announced the death of 21 reservists fighting in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.
Hamas forces fired a rocket-propelled grenade on multiple adjacent structures, along with landmines that the IDF forces had collected and brought into the buildings, which caused a total collapse that killed 19 soldiers and injured several others on Monday.
The incident occurred around 4:00 p.m. in al-Muasi in central Gaza.
In addition, a separate rocket-propelled grenade was fired on an IDF tank which killed two IDF soldiers and injured two others. (…)
The IDF forces who were harmed were mostly reservists assigned to clear certain areas of dangerous items, such as mines.
Rescue activities went on for hours with the brigade commander having been on site from the start of the incident.
IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi issues a video statement on the deaths of 21 soldiers in a blast and building collapse in the central Gaza Strip yesterday
"We share in the grief of their families for the heavy loss, and know that the pain is too much to bear," Halevi… pic.twitter.com/IkefjIGW1T
— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) January 23, 2024
More than two hundred Israeli soldiers have been killed in action in Gaza since the military launched the ground offensive against Hamas terrorists nearly thirteen weeks ago.
“556 IDF soldiers have been killed since the start of the war on October 7,” the Israeli broadcaster Arutz Sheva noted. “More than 200 of them have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the ground maneuver began on October 27.”
IDF blasts Israeli radio into Gaza terror tunnels in bid to reassure hostages
With the Israeli military getting ever closer to hostages, the soldiers are using loudspeakers to blast Israeli radio in terror tunnels in a bid to reassure the hostages that the IDF is closing in on their captors.
Gaza has hundreds of miles of terror tunnels, many of them interconnected to enable the movement of terror fighters and weaponry. These deep underground tunnels also function as dungeons for holding hostages, the recent IDF finds show.
The Times of Israel reported:
After conquering a Hamas tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip, a group of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers went down it with some unusual kit in hand — not explosives, robot probes, or pistols for close combat, but rather old-style, dial-operated transistor radios.
Their mission was to descend until the devices could no longer receive AM transmissions from Israel. That point, they found, was at about 10 to 12 meters (32 to 39 feet) depth, generally the upper “floors” of the Hamas terrorists’ subterranean network.
The January 4 experiment was ordered by their commander at the behest of Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who had just expanded the country’s most popular broadcaster, Army Radio, from industry-standard FM onto complementary AM channels.
AM’s greater range meant emergency updates had a better chance of being heard by civilians in bomb shelters. Troops in Gaza also benefitted, as they were being allowed transistor radios to keep themselves informed, after surrendering their cellphones, lest those be geolocated by Hamas.
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What will all the pro-Hamas fools calling for a ceasefire say now?
They will say that because Israel still exists, not enough was offered. And the American Left will echo it.
Subotai Bahadur
It seemed like an offer too good to turn down – so why was it turned down, really? It
makes sense if Hamas knows that the don’t actually have any hostages to release, since they’ve already killed them all. They don’t dare agree to release them all and then say “oh by the way they’re all dead.”
Hamas wants for Jews, what the Aliens in “Independence Day” wanted for humanity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Rw5MosKRm4
Give the terms…release all prisoners held by Hamas or suffer consequence. One leader per day will be killed until all hostages are returned safely.
Don’t return them? Face complete destruction by moving Gaza walls one meter per day westward.
Too lenient. 1 kilometer per day. And stop allowing relief in.
Subotai Bahadur
I think, at this point, Israel should just say “the hostages will be returned tomorrow, or we are reclaiming Gaza.
Choose wisely.
Hamas cowards need their human shields, be they Israeli hostages or Pali citizens.
They’re probably already dead. Or the Hamassholes would rather get wiped out and take the hostages with them.
It’s how they think.
Dead or sold along into slavery.
I agree. That would explain perfectly why Hamas can’t agree to anything – it would mean admitting publicly what they’ve done, and they’ve decided they’d rather fight to the death.
Hamas has no intention of releasing the hostages. Most are probably dead.
Most? Likely all are now dead. They’ve been far too long hostages to Hamas to realistically still be alive.
A poll of Arab countries apparently showed 0% of Palestinians thought the Oct 7 was inappropriate.
You’ll notice that there are no female faces in that collage. In spite of ‘women in combat’ advocates in the US endlessly citing IDF as an example of a ‘fully integrated’ fighting force, IDF is in fact not fully integrated. Men are almost exclusively makeup their expeditionary units even when the expedition is literally right next door. The women protect the homeland and largely serve in support billets. In any event, RIP young lions.
Do you remember the all female tank division that responded to Oct 7 and killed many terrorists?
Tanks are the things surrounded by 3″ armor plating, right?
When that female US Marine Infantry officer publicly compared field performance out loud, a few years back, maybe we should have listened. Paraphrasing, net: Other things being equal male Marine Infantry Officers had better physical durability in deployment over time. Female officers were having career ending injuries at a much higher pace and rate than male, just from the operations.
Durability is a thing. You do the job, best you can. When somebody better comes along, you let them do it. Doing your part does not mean everybody can do the same.
Couldn’t agree more. FWIW, I spent more than 20-years as a Marine Corps Infantry Officer. While for much of my career I didn’t need to worry myself with WMs as they simply weren’t in the infantry, when I was on an independent duty assignment (or some other non-Fleet assignment), that changed. One of the biggest issues that is NEVER spoken about publicly is the PFT failure rates for WMs. It’s significantly higher than it is for men (even though PFT failure rates for male Marines has appreciably risen the last 20-years (because kids today are fat AF). Even though the PFT is much less demanding for women, they still fail it at a much higher rate. If you have infantry OFFICERS who can’t even make a 3-mile run, think about what impact that’s going to have on the troops. Physicality is an element of war-fighting. It’s dangerous to pretend that it isn’t.
Every attack on male vs. female differences is dangerous, be it the military or our children.
The intersectional class / caste / group people make two profound thinking errors under every piece of their program. (Not surprising given the backgrounds and goals of the originators they parrot.)
— Statistics: how things come out. A statistical group is just a handy abstraction. A statistical inference doesn’t define how any instance in the group will be; it just tells you which way to bet when you don’t have anything else to go on.
— Categories: things that come out the same. Xtuff in in the category when it works the same; it’s a bad category when what happens go stuff in it varies. Presidents of Harvard who keep their million-dollar salaries after getting pushed out for crappy scholarship aren’t all that “oppressed.” This is why their definitions shift all the time: whatever it takes to keep the claim intact.
You’d think it would be hard to abuse their thinking in two contradictory ways at the same time, but motivated reasoning is a hell of a drug.
— Third profound thinking error: mechanism uber alles. Hey, there’s gotta be some oppressed / oppressors here, we just gotta find them. These people are the kid who finding a room full of presents on Christmas vs. a pile of manure, goes madly digging to find something wrong in there, like manure. (BTW, my Tuesday is free next week. Something new we can go protest?)
Fashion driven “understanding” tends to get you a lot of fashion, but not so much of the other thing.
Well, thank you Targa. Hard to go wrong quoting a Marine; they’re — you’re — empirical, reality-grounded, and mission-oriented. That doesn’t vary that I’ve seen. The induction, selection, and ongoing orientation is very robust.
Our chattering classes don’t get that performance in role and on task is an empirical question. That orientation is built into every Marine I’ve encountered.
/Story
I got to work with a particular Marine a bit over 20 years ago on some very cluster-fzzzed IT. Once I calibrated the literalness, and that nothing on point is off limits, it was outstanding. Turns out he had also previously been among the evaluation crew for some stuff I helped build, in a former life. Much enjoyed his take — bang on as they say, the good and the bad.
BTW, un-fzzzing the cluster-fzzz, we came in late and outran everyone else in under 3 months.
It is reasonable to assume that the refusal, when it so benefits HAMAS, can be considered working proof that the hostages are dead or so badly injured that producing them will trigger revenge. At this point although it cannot be ordered in theory, granting quarter is pointless.
Subotai Bahadur
No surprise that these Arab Muslim “Palestinian” terrorist thugs and Islamofascists rejected the ceasefire offer (which Israel was correct to offer, from a political standpoint). These terrorists don’t abide by any scintilla of morality or decency. Their stupid “holy war” against non-Muslims is all that they cling to.
It still galls me how tepid is the political support in Europe and in the U.S., for Israel’s righteous reprisals against the goose-stepping, Muslim terrorist thugs of Hamas. Western countries’ decline into morally feckless and bankrupt dhimmitude — largely born of fallacious “social justice” dogma and Muslim supremacist propaganda that falsely paints the perennially belligerent “Palestinians” as alleged victims, and, intended to appease their increasingly bullying, fascistic and restive Muslim populations — bodes ill for the future.
I’m always saddened to read about IDF casualties, but, Israel needs to continue until Hamas is utterly destroyed and the hostages rescued, or, their bodies are recovered.
Let us dispatch them to Allah with all haste and prejudice.
Hostage taking, and sexual violence have now been completely normalized, mainstreamed, and rewarded. By the Tony’s — Blinken and Guterres — and by the entire world.
So, we can expect to see a whole lot more October 7th-like incidents. Big and small.
The hostages will be captured in raids all around the world — and then kept in previously-constructed secure locations that are essentially inaccessible….. to be raped, and videotaped, and mutilated, and videotaped, and tormented and videotaped. And killed and videotaped.
Any attempt to retaliate or rescue hostages will be condemned as raycist or genocidal and brought to the ICJ
Good job, Blinken pos
Good work, UN
There was a series called Mindhunters, about the beginning of the FBI Behavioral Unit , their focus was serial killers, in fact they coined the term, anyway, there was an episode when the FBI agent was interviewing a suspect and he says, “what kind of monster tortures, rapes and disembowels women”, anyway close to direct quote…
Well we know… don’t we…
By the way, not that skin pigmentation should matter in any way, but, take a gander at the photos of the twenty-one soldiers who were killed in action — you’ll see a few who are likely Ethiopian Jews, and, others of fairly swarthy complexion, reflecting the diversity of Jewish Israeli heritage.
The vile dhimmis and Dhimmi-crats are always spewing their vile propaganda that attempts to paint Jews as allegedly universally “white,” but, anyone who understands Jewish history knows that this is a vile slander and lie.
It’s the very picture of “apartheid.”
The terrorist group Hamas has rejected a generous Israeli ceasefire offer in exchange for the release of remaining hostages . . .
Good. Now that the Israeli government has made an honest attempt to free the Israeli hostages, and that attempt has been rejected by Hamas, there is nothing stopping the IDF from stepping up their offensive and wiping Hamas and its supporters off the face of the earth.
I believe that was the plan. Once again demonstrate who is willing to cooperate and attempt peace and who is not. Helpful for arguing with useful idiots around the world who demand a cease-fire, but also useful for dealing with hostage families that demand capitulation to the enemy. They don’t understand that surrendering in order to save these hostages will result in more terror attacks and different Israelis dying instead. Pretty awful choices but Arab terror must be extinguished.
We’re gonna keep going til we get the hostages Hamas won’t trade for.
rtly after the incident, the IDF confirmed the complete encirclement of Khan Younis, the last remaining major Hamas bastion where top terror commanders are believed to be hiding.
I dearly wish the IDF would stop with these nonsensical statements. The “top terror commanders” are most likely nowhere near Khan Younis let alone still in Gaza. They’ve all probably fled to Qatar, Iran or some other Arab terrorist supporting country when it became apparent to them that they crossed a line that shouldn’t have been crossed and now face extinction for their barbaric actions on Oct. 7th. So I don’t expect them to find any of these “top terror commanders” in Khan Younis let along anywhere in Gaza.
So the Israelis capture or kill the “top terror commanders” who either were too slow, too stupid, or too junior to leave Gaza.
It’s a start.
Then Israel can go after all the “top terror commanders” in Qatar, Iran, and elsewhere. There is neither a time limit nor a bag limit.
they continued hunting Nazi commanders for 20 years, clear into the 60s and all over the world. These Hamas commanders are dead men walking, condemned to always looking over their shoulders and not sure who they can trust outside Qatar – and even that has a price.
OTOH, Israel’s pronouncements on these matters may be part of a counter-intelligence disinformation campaign to mislead their opponents concerning the state of their intelligence where it concerns Hamas leadership, making some of them, and their hosts, feel that they’re “safe” where they are now. Even if Israeli intelligence doesn’t know where they are, instilling confidence in the terror leaders’ belief that they’re safe can also cause them to make mistakes, helping to reveal their locations. Intelligence operations work in mysterious ways, with layer upon layer, point and counter-point.
I won’t pretend to be any kind of authority on the unfolding threat environment in Gaza. But, I’m not sure if this is correct. Ultimately, Israel has effectively enveloped Gaza and (along with the Egyptians) enjoys absolute control of who/what leaves and enters Gaza. While it’s true that Qatar and Turkey (and likely a few other countries) are homing a number of key Hamas leaders, the tactical Hamas leadership that was in Gaza on October has either assumed room temperature or….is still in Gaza, somewhere. IDF will eventually get them. Mossad will eventually take care of those who left Gaza before October 7th.
“Israel … enjoys absolute control of who/what leaves and enters Gaza.”
Demonstrably not. There’s a lot of mortars, RPGs, and AKs running around Gaza, still They don’t make those, there — no industry.
First problem — A sufficiently clever Abdul Al MacGyver can conjure a rocket out of stuff you kinda gotta let in: food, fertilizer and water pipes. ~1,000 fired on Horde Day, with a steady rain continuing thereafter.
Second problem — Smuggling has a long, lucrative history.
you kinda gotta let in
Not any more you don’t.
And almost all of those weapons were stockpiled before Oct 7.
Maybe a distraction, they surely know
Jews did a good job of tracking down Nazis, they will probably do the same with Pales.
Gaza is part of occupied Israel. Free occupied Israel from the genocidal Arab colonizers. The world demands it!
Better said that Gaza is an occupied part of Israel. It allows less ambiguity about the occupation roles, IMO.
The hostages are either dead or been so thoroughly abused that Hamas will never risk releasing them.
Everybody knows it, they’re just pretending otherwise.
Of course they did.
“While some states have an army, the Prussian army has a state.” —Voltaire
Hamas has recreated what the Prussian army once was.
The attitude of Prussia and Hamas towards war, honor, compromise, and martyrdom are almost identical.
From 1870 through 1945, the Prussians were largely or solely responsible for thre major wars.
Since 1993’s Oslo accords, Hamas has killed a lot of people, without apology. And they unapologetically assert openly their intent to continue making war.
—-
After WWII, Europeans finally did away with “Prussia” and “Prussians” as recognized entities. And there’s been peace — not war — in the 8 decades since.
Today, after 30 years of making continuous warfare, the Hamas and the Arabs are ??about to be offered a country??!
Kids in junior high school would understand that this is an awful idea that can only make things worse.
Those who would force such a thing on Israel are in effect threatening Israelis.
It would be like forcing kindergartens to accept pedophiles as teachers and teachers aides.
Prussians were smarter than Pales.
I am not sure, But I suspect that the teachers’ unions will force [minimal force required] to put that last sentence in the Democrat Platform this summer.
Subotai Bahadur
All the rules of negotiation are out because one party lies about everything that is negotiated. Hamas has said no two-state solution and that they will continue their war until Israel is destroyed. What part of that is negotiable?
Well, I think the mistaken presumption is that after the terrorists are no longer in control a real state could take hold and really work. Of course the real problem is that even if you killed 100% of the terrorists that do the trigger pulling/stabbing/bomb detonating/raping/kidnapping/car ramming, you still have 2 million terrorists that support and sometimes directly assist the violence.
It would be like forcing kindergartens to accept pedophiles as teachers and teachers aides
Hmm, seems as if that is something that has happened in many areas of the Country
I only want to caveat the statement that IDF soldiers died in a “terrorist attack.” No. They are now in a war, and they are soldiers. When they are attacked, it is a legitimate target. We need to be clearer about the use of “terrorist”, IMO. A combatant firing a weapon at other combatants is not terrorism.
(They might be an illegal combatant by Geneva standards – uniforms, not hiding behind civilians, and such – but they are still a combatant.)
ooooooh. a GENEROUS offer from israel. well then israel must be the good guy here. most do not know what the real israelites are. but now israel cannot divert forces elsewhere for two months. and the houthis are not trying to stop global trade only israeli trade.
zolanet: What would your solution be?
dismantle the dragon vatican and pharisee banking media cartel
dismantle the dragon vatican
Had Israel leveled Gaza as the Allies did Nazi Germany it would all be over now.