this post was submitted on 07 May 2024
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Okay attitudes towards the hostages can be unrealistic, but I think you're missing a few key points.
First of all, the hostages aren't meant to prevent Israel from completing its genocide. That's just not the reality on the ground. They're meant to pull the negotiations in Hamas's favor. What I meant by "to prevent Israel from turning Gaza into beachfront property" was "so the eventual ceasefire agreement doesn't have Gaza becoming beachfront property as part of it". Again, "as part of the ceasefire agreement". The only thing the hostages are doing now is losing Netanyahu face at home; I'm 100% aware that they're not holding back the IDF (Hannibal directive anyone?). That said, they have been a central part of negotiation between Hamas and Israel. They're not the end all be all of genocide enders, but they're very much valuable because the Israeli government can't sacrifice Israeli civilians' lives for a war half the population agrees doesn't have a clearly defined goal. Or, well, they can, but the protests a few days ago show why that's a bad idea.
Correction: So technically it was a week but that aside, the idea was for a pause that would become "something more enduring" in Biden's words. It didn't work and that's why Hamas is now not accepting anything less than a permanent ceasefire. I doubt they went into the deal expecting that it'd end in a week with no progress.
In a way, yes. Again, remember the protests from a few days ago. The Israeli public is pissed that the hostages aren't coming back home. This is half the reason they're opposing the war over there. Meanwhile the genocide, while definitely having their blessing, is a more top-down affair. Could be me misreading the situation, but it seems to me like Israelis are more invested in the hostages' safe return than in this particular genocide. At least enough of them are that people are calling on Netanyahu to accept the ceasefire deal.
The hostages alone won't save Gaza, but their existence or lack thereof will and has had a large effect on negotiations, and it's natural to think it will have more when Israel is more serious about trying to end the fighting (which will happen eventually; they can't go on like this forever (hopefully)).
So you're making good points generally, but the protests I'm referring to clearly demanded a ceasefire so the hostages can return. They explicitly said that they wanted Netanyahu to make a ceasefire agreement and return the hostages.
Yeah make that a hundred.
The protesters are actually calling for a ceasefire and have been for a while so at least it's not as one-sided as you seem to think. No idea about the ratios though, so feel free to drop them if you've seen them.
Yes, but none will actually work. How many hostages has Israel retrieved outside of negotiations? From a purely strategic point of view force is not working if your goal is to retrieve the hostages (which we know it's not). Israelis aren't upset because the IDF is attempting to retrieve the hostages using force; they're upset because force can't work without sacrificing a significant fraction of those hostages as both we and the Israeli public have learned in the past few months.