Quote:
Originally Posted by 1andrew1
Unless Hamas and Israel strike an agreement, releasing any remaining hostages won't stop the invasion or blocking of aid.
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Perhaps, but right now, I struggle to see any advantage for Hamas to keep the hostages, it obviously hasn’t deterred any Israeli military action, it gives Israel an ‘excuse’ for what is happening, I fail to see any good reason to keep them.
Hypothetically suppose that Hamas announce that they will release all of their surviving hostages, and the bodies of those who have died, tomorrow - unconditionally, we just need to know who to release them to and how, safely!
At a stroke it removes a major plank in Israel’s government's justification for pursuing the war. It does, however, create more pressure on Netanyahu to come to some sort of arrangement.
Now there is the obvious claim that this is simply not in his interest, that he needs this to continue to stay in power rather than face possible legal action against him. If the hostages were released and Israel does nothing to reciprocate, then this just reinforces this idea.
Following the Hamas attacks, Isreal had an enormous amount of of international sympathy and support - they have gone from that to a virtual pariah state, arguably because of one persons desire to cling to power.
Hypothetically, in the midst of the IRA’s bombing campaign against British civilian targets, we had retaliated by nuking Dublin to ‘wipe out the IRA commanders’ once and for all'? How would history have regarded that?