Currently Online 
‘If Israel or Hamas have to make reasonable changes to get a deal, they should do so’
A senior US official not named by Reuters told the agency that there has been a “frustrating” negotiating process with Hamas on a ceasefire deal.
The official said a Palestinian prisoner exchange and areas of Israeli withdrawal are remaining obstacles to a deal. While there is nothing in the agreement which mentions the Philadelphi corridor, the dispute lies in whether that area counts as a densely populated area from which Israel would withdraw.
The official added that Israel’s security concerns will be prioritised in any deal and that the recent killings of six Israeli captives by Hamas have brought the matter of a ceasefire deal to greater urgency.
The official also stated that if Israel or Hamas have to make reasonable changes to get a deal, they should do so.
In Biden's original proposal Israel would withdraw from all of Gaza. Why is it now a negotiation of areas of Israeli withdrawal.
But this does read like Hamas made some concessions, yet it still hinges on the Philadelphi corridor. Which is of course densely populated, Rafah is all along the border...
Anyway it's just a way for Netanyahu to sabotage the deal, it's not even in Israel's interest to keep soldiers there. Monitoring solutions have already been proposed. Soldiers would only provide targets for resistance, sitting ducks.
Anyway it's not really about Gaza anymore. Gaza is now mostly a smoke screen for the advance of ethnic cleansing in the West bank.
Israelis ‘feel angry, desperate and betrayed by their government’: Advocate
Yuli Novak, the executive director of Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem has told the UN Security Council that Israelis feel “angry, desperate and betrayed by their government”.
“During this week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets,” Novak said.
“They have understood that the Israeli government does not want to retain their hostages in the deal, but to continue the war indefinitely,” she told the council’s 15 members, in a briefing delivered via videoconference.
Novak added that the Israeli government has been “cynically exploiting” the “collective trauma” Israelis experienced on October 7, “to violently advance its project of cementing Israel’s control over the entire land”.
