Just a moment...
www.axios.com

This is the first time a video of Alexander has emerged since he was taken hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.

Alexander says in the video he has been held captive for more than 420 days, which raises the possibility the video was taken in the last 24 hours.

101 hostages are still held by Hamas in Gaza, among them seven Americans.

  • Somethingcheezie@lemmy.world
    68·
    21 days ago

    So they took hostages and are wondering why there is a war going on

    Seems peace would be simpler if people didn’t take hostages

    • Keeponstalin@lemmy.world
      146·
      21 days ago

      Hostages were taken precisely because Apartheid is not peace

      Hamas proposed a full prisoner swap as early as Oct 8th, and agreed to the US proposed UN Permanent Ceasefire Resolution. Additionally, Hamas has already agreed to no longer govern the Gaza Strip, as long as Palestinians receive liberation and a unified government can take place.

      This isnt about the hostages, this is Israel engaging in Genocide to eradicate and forcibly displace the Palestinian people. Gaza has never stopped being under Israeli occupation since 1967. Hamas only exists because of the Apartheid Occupation of Israel and the daily violence that has subjected Palestinians to for generations. Israel has always been the obstacle for peace, and has been the one preventing a ceasefire.

      De-development via the Gaza Occupation

      Between July 1971 and February 1972, Sharon enjoyed considerable success. During this time, the entire Strip (apart from the Rafah area) was sealed off by a ring of security fences 53 miles in length, with few entrypoints. Today, their effects live on: there are only three points of entry to Gaza—Erez, Nahal Oz, and Rafah.

      Perhaps the most dramatic and painful aspect of Sharon’s campaign was the widening of roads in the refugee camps to facilitate military access. Israel built nearly 200 miles of security roads and destroyed thousands of refugee dwellings as part of the widening process.’ In August 1971, for example, the Israeli army destroyed 7,729 rooms (approximately 2,000 houses) in three vola- tile camps, displacing 15,855 refugees: 7,217 from Jabalya, 4,836 from Shati, and 3,802 from Rafah.

      • Page 105

      Through 1993 Israel imposed a one-way system of tariffs and duties on the importation of goods through its borders; leaving Israel for Gaza, however, no tariffs or other regulations applied. Thus, for Israeli exports to Gaza, the Strip was treated as part of Israel; but for Gazan exports to Israel, the Strip was treated as a foreign entity subject to various “non-tariff barriers.” This placed Israel at a distinct advantage for trading and limited Gaza’s access to Israeli and foreign markets. Gazans had no recourse against such policies, being totally unable to protect themselves with tariffs or exchange rate controls. Thus, they had to pay more for highly protected Israeli products than they would if they had some control over their own economy. Such policies deprived the occupied territories of significant customs revenue, estimated at $118-$176 million in 1986.

      • page 240

      In a report released in May 2015, the World Bank revealed that as a result of Israel’s blockade and OPE, Gaza’s manufacturing sector shrank by as much as 60% over eight years while real per capita income is 31 percent lower than it was 20 years ago. The report also stated that the blockade alone is responsible for a 50% decrease in Gaza’s GDP since 2007. Furthermore, OPE (combined with the tunnel closure) exacerbated an already grave situation by reducing Gaza’s economy by an additional $460 million.

      • Page 402

      • The Gaza Strip: The Political Economy of De-Development - Third Edition by Sara M. Roy

      Blockade, including Aid

      Hamas began twenty years into the occupation during the first Intifada, with the goal of ending the occupation. Collective punishment has been a deliberate Israeli tactic for decades with the Dahiya doctrine. Violence such as suicide bombings and rockets escalated in response to Israeli enforcement of the occupation and apartheid.

      After the ‘disengagement’ in 2007, this turned into a full blockade; where Israel has had control over the airspace, borders, and sea. Under the guise of ‘dual-use’ Israel has restricted food, allocating a minimum supply leading to over half of Gaza being food insecure; construction materials, medical supplies, and other basic necessities have also been restricted.

      The blockade and Israel’s repeated military offensives have had a heavy toll on Gaza’s essential infrastructure and further debilitated its health system and economy, leaving the area in a state of perpetual humanitarian crisis. Indeed, Israel’s collective punishment of Gaza’s civilian population, the majority of whom are children, has created conditions inimical to human life due to shortages of housing, potable water and electricity, and lack of access to essential medicines and medical care, food, educational equipment and building materials.

      Peace Process and Solution

      Both Hamas and Fatah have agreed to a Two-State solution based on the 1967 borders for decades. Oslo and Camp David were used by Israel to continue settlements in the West Bank and maintain an Apartheid, while preventing any actual Two-State solution

      How Avi Shlaim moved from two-state solution to one-state solution

      ‘One state is a game changer’: A conversation with Ilan Pappe

      One State Solution, Foreign Affairs

      Human Shields

      Hamas:

      Intentionally utilizing the presence of civilians or other protected persons to render certain areas immune from military attack is prohibited under international law. Amnesty International was not able to establish whether or not the fighters’ presence in the camps was intended to shield themselves from military attacks. However, under international humanitarian law, even if one party uses “human shields”, or is otherwise unlawfully endangering civilians, this does not absolve the opposing party from complying with its obligations to distinguish between military objectives and civilians or civilian objects, to refrain from carrying out indiscriminate or disproportionate attacks, and to take all feasible precautions to spare civilians and civilian objects.

      Israel:

      Additionally, there is extensive independent verification of Israel using Palestinians as Human Shields:

      Deliberate Attacks on Civilians

      Israel deliberately targets civilian areas. From in general with the Dahiya Doctrine to multiple systems deployed in Gaza to do so:

      Israel also targets Israeli Soldiers and Civilians to prevent them being leveraged as hostages, known as the Hannibal Directive. Which was also used on Oct 7th.

    • fukhueson@lemmy.world
      42·
      20 days ago

      Agree, I see no benefit Hamas brings to Palestinians. Not that Netanyahu has been any sort of angel, Hamas is the de facto governing authority and puts itself above it’s people, and violently shuts down dissent, which is why any polls regarding support for Hamas should be taken with a grain of salt. They’re terrorists, and their actions thus far haven’t backed up their claims that they simply support liberation for Palestinians. Sinwar has been a road block in all negotiations that would have helped put an end to this round of fighting, as has Netanyahu, Hamas never officially accepted a cease fire since sinwar didn’t. This is not to give license to what Netanyahu is doing, but depending on who you talk to here on Lemmy you’d think Hamas was simply running an ice cream parlor that funded their efforts to negotiate peace with Israel, while the IDF rolled in daily to satiate their need for Palestinian baby blood.

      https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-hamas

      https://www.csis.org/analysis/why-hamas-attacked-when-it-did

      https://rdi.org/articles/why-hamas-wont-surrender/

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Gaza_economic_protests

      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_Gaza_economic_protests

      https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0vewvp14zdo

      https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-june-24-2024/

      QUESTION: Yeah. Sorry – (laughter) – I have so many. Yesterday, the prime minister – the Israeli prime minister – basically rejected the whole Biden plan, and he said, okay, we want to exchange some of the hostages for a few prisoners and that’s it, that’s the end of it. So do you still think that the ball is in Hamas’s court and not in Israel’s court?

      MR MILLER: So I saw the comments the prime minister made yesterday, and then I saw the statement his office put out clarifying that they wanted to secure the release of all hostages, and then I saw the further statement the prime minister said today where he said – made clear he supports the proposal that Israel put on the table and the President laid out. So I will just say I think all of us that speak publicly at times make mistakes and misspeak, and when we do so, we have an obligation to come clarify. And we’re glad he did.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-phase_Israel–Hamas_war_ceasefire_proposal

      On 10 June, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2735 backing the 31 May proposal, noting Israel’s acceptance thereof and calling on Hamas to accept the proposed agreement as well. The following day, Hamas and Islamic Jihad replied to the resolution with amendments to the proposal, including a timeline for a permanent ceasefire and troop withdrawals, and the Office of the Israeli Prime Minister stated, “The claim that Israel agreed to end the war before achieving all its goals is a total lie”. The United States responded to the Palestinians’ proposed amendments by calling them unworkable. The day after that, Hamas denied adding any new ideas to the ceasefire proposal. On 21 June, Hamas stated, “The priority is to stop the criminal war on our people”, and three days later, Netanyahu stated Israel would only accept a partial ceasefire that would not end the war.

      …

      October 2024, U.S. officials said that they believed that Sinwar was no longer interested in a ceasefire deal with Israel. These officials said that Sinwar had become “inflexible” and “fatalistic” as the war had progressed, adding that he was hoping for it to expand into a wider regional conflict involving Iran.

      https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-october-17-2024/

      So, a few things about that. First of all, as you know, we’ve been trying to achieve a ceasefire that returns the hostages home, alleviates the suffering of the Palestinian people, and ends the war for many months now. And the chief obstacle to reaching that ceasefire and bringing an end to the war has been Sinwar, who has refused to negotiate at all in recent weeks and has said no time and time again. That obstacle has obviously been removed. Can’t predict that that means that whoever replaces Hamas[1] will agree to a ceasefire, but it does remove what has been in recent months the chief obstacle to getting one. So,we’re going to continue to work with our partners to try to find an end to the war. The Secretary already today while on Air Force One with the President flying to Berlin called the prime minister of Qatar, who has been one of our two mediators – other mediators – working to reach an end to the war. He called the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia to talk about the path forward, and he will be having additional contacts in the days ahead.

      https://www.state.gov/briefings/department-press-briefing-august-7-2024/

      I don’t think there is. I really don’t think – it’s what the Secretary said yesterday, obviously, and I think is accurate, which is it doesn’t really change the situation. Two things can be true: Number one, Sinwar is a brutal terrorist with blood on his hands, including the blood of American citizens, and not just American citizens but citizens of many countries around the world. Let’s remember, it’s not just citizens of Israel that were killed on October 7th; there were citizens of multiple countries, as I said, including the United States. That is true.

      It is also true that he continues to be the person that calls the shots for Hamas. And that was true before the death of the leader of the – the political leader of Hamas; it continues to be true today. Ultimately, it was Sinwar that had the final decision-making authority, as we can see throughout these negotiations, on whether to accept a ceasefire or not.

      I’ve posted things like this in the past which have gotten me falsely labeled as a genocide denialist and genocide apologist (rationalize for me how both of those things could be true…), but in reality it’s the persistence here of the flawed idea that being critical of Hamas means you support Netanyahu. Which means dissent towards Hamas on Lemmy is thus attacked… Kinda like it is in Gaza. Go figure.