The Truth About the Gaza Deal

[Prairie Gates]

Netanyahu found a face-saving way to fold.

Israel was losing the war. Their recent offensive was stalled - again - in Gaza City. They had already lost world opinion almost completely. Last week, two million Italians protested the Netanyahu regime, shutting down much of the country in an unapproved general strike. That was just a sample of what's been happening everywhere. Netanyahu was further losing domestic opinion in Israel itself. The IDF was failing at every objective other than pure destruction for destruction's sake.

The "Deal" was structured in a way to give Netanyahu and Trump the appearance of a victory. It does so by basically giving Hamas everything it wants in a "Round 1," and then leaving the "Round 2" materials for later. That this was also seemingly timed to push Trump over the line for a Peace Prize only speaks to the utter cynicism of both regimes. Hamas gets a 100 to 1 hostage exchange, opening up of aid (that was supposedly not being blocked, let's remember!), and a ceasefire. Israel gets its last 20 living hostages back (they've been unable to locate a single hostage for months). Hamas puts off disarmament and has thus far rejected the truly bizarre re-colonization of Gaza under an insane British mandate, complete with dipshit Tony Blair. Some of us are old enough to remember that the war would never be over until every last Hamas member had been hunted down and surrendered, and Gaza was completely disarmed.

So, anyway, that's where we are. We should all, of course, be very grateful that the overt genocide has been halted, and that hostages are being freed.