Steven Sahiounie
Hamas wants an end to the war, but the U.S. is looking only for a 6-week pause, and Israel is willing to allow a pause but resume the genocide afterward.
The Hamas delegation left Cairo on Thursday and will resume negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza next week. Time is running out before the Holy month of Ramadan begins. Hamas wants an end to the war, but the U.S. is looking only for a 6-week pause, and Israel is willing to allow a pause but resume the genocide afterward.
UN experts, many world leaders, humanitarian organizations, and millions of civilians across the U.S., UK, Europe, Africa, and Asia agree on one point: the only way to prevent or end famine in Gaza is an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Israel's unrelenting attack on 2.3 million people in Gaza, day and night for almost five months, has killed over 30,700. If the bombs and bullets don't kill them all, then starvation will.
U.S. President Joe Biden, the one man in the world who holds the keys to a ceasefire in Gaza, refuses to demand the Israelis end the war. Biden has finally come up with a weak deal to offer Hamas to stop the slaughtering, but just for six weeks, not permanently.
Hamas proposal in Cairo
Hamas representatives have been meeting in Cairo with Egyptian and Qatari negotiators. On Wednesday, March 6, Hamas said they were continuing their efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza even though Israel refused to participate in the negotiations.
Osama Hamdan, in Beirut, voiced the demands of the resistance group. They want a permanent end to Israeli attacks and the withdrawal of Israeli forces to allow the people to return to their homes. He stressed that a prisoner swap could only occur after a ceasefire.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim said Hamas had presented its draft deal and was awaiting a response from Israel, and that "the ball now is in the Americans' court".
The U.S. proposal at the UN
On March 5, Biden said a ceasefire deal was in the hands of Hamas. He was referring to the U.S. deal offered to Hamas, and he never mentioned or referred to the deal Hamas offered to Israel.
Biden's deal offered a six-week ceasefire in exchange for the release of all Israeli hostages in Gaza.
Israel is willing to pause the slaughter and genocide in Gaza for a few weeks, but Netanyahu and his radical right-wing partners insist they will never stop the bombardment until Hamas is exterminated.
"It's in the hands of Hamas right now. Israelis have been cooperating. There's been a rational offer," Biden told reporters.
Getting the Israeli hostages out has never been a priority for Netanyahu, but it has been for the families and friends of the hostages. They have been holding protests and marches ever since the conflict began. The families of the hostages expected their government to negotiate for their release, but Netanyahu's war room ignored their pleas, in favor of revenge killings in Gaza.
From the very beginning of the conflict which broke out October 7, 2023, He is willing to use the phrase 'humanitarian pause', and his current deal offered to Hamas is only a pause, with an exact timetable attached to resume the butchery which has killed mainly women and children.
The U.S. is promoting its 'pause' deal at the UN, even though the U.S. has vetoed every UN resolution aimed at peace in Gaza, with the most recent U.S. veto on February 20.
Netanyahu says IDF will remain in Gaza for 10 years
The Times of Israel reported recently that Netanyahu has planned for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to remain in a military occupation of Gaza for at least 10 years. This is opposed by the U.S., EU, UN, and most world leaders. Israel may agree to a pause, but a ceasefire and withdrawal is out of the question. This means the Palestinian people and their supporters will remain resisting occupation, which is guaranteed by the Geneva Convention.
The Flour Massacre
On February 29, at least 112 people were killed and 760 were injured when Israeli tanks opened heavy fire on Palestinian civilians attempting to collect flour to make bread near Gaza City.
The attack was investigated by the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor. The attack was captured on video in which gunshots and weapon fire were heard. The victims were examined and had gunshot injuries, the scene was strewn with blood on flour sacks and aid boxes, and survivors' eyewitness testimony attested to the Israeli attack on starving Palestinians in search of food for their families. Many of the survivors stated they were shot in the back while running away from the scene.
Israel tried to blame the deaths and injuries on a stampede in the chaos of scrambling to get the flour. However, the aerial footage the IDF released of the scene proved there were IDF tanks present. The people running in the aerial footage were running from Israeli gunfire directed at them.
After the 'Flour Massacre' happened, the first response from the Biden White House, as parroted by CNN on the front lawn, was the Israeli version of events: people stampeded because of chaos while trying to get some food.
However, in the video accompanying the CNN report, sounds of weapons fire are heard over and over again.
Later, Christiane Amanpour of CNN reported on information relayed to her from trusted contacts on the ground in Gaza, humanitarian groups, that those killed at the 'Flour Massacre' had gunshot wounds. Amanpour has a career motto: don't be neutral, be truthful.
"The attack came after Israel has denied humanitarian aid into Gaza City and northern Gaza for more than a month," said the UN experts, who described "a pattern of Israeli attacks against Palestinian civilians seeking aid".
In a statement, a group of UN special rapporteurs accused Israel of "intentionally starving the Palestinian people in Gaza since 8 October," adding: "Now it is targeting civilians seeking humanitarian aid and humanitarian convoys."
There is mounting evidence of famine in the Gaza Strip, and at least 14 similar incidents have been reported.
On Friday, March 1, the U.S. blocked a statement put forward by Algeria and backed by 15 UNSC members except the U.S. to condemn Israel for the killing of more than 100 Palestinians in the 'Flour Massacre'. The U.S. claimed it was trying to verify how the people died in light of Israel's denial of shooting the hungry people.
Biden doesn't care about protests
Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, was asked on CNN about Biden's reaction to being taunted by protesters demanding a ceasefire immediately in Gaza.
Landrieu replied that Biden respects their right to freedom of speech, and "he has no problem with it."
Biden and his administration, view the call for a ceasefire in Gaza as just an exercise in the right of freedom of speech as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. Biden and his administration will gladly tolerate calls for a ceasefire because that is the right of every American.
However, the Biden administration misses the point. Millions of Americans are demanding an end to the slaughter in Gaza, carried out by the American weapons provided without any oversight or conditions by the U.S. State Department. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has faced resignations among his staff because of the unbridled flow of weapons to Israel, which have killed well over 30,000 Palestinians, mainly women and children as reported by the UN and humanitarian groups.
Blinken has the authority to hold up weapons transfers based on the State Department's own rule, that no weapons can be sent to a country that may use them in war crimes, crimes against humanity, or in violation of humanitarian law. Blinken famously told Netanyahu, that he came to support Israel as a Jew. Blinken was not representing the rules and protocol of the U.S. State Department, but was instead representing his race, and his bloodline having been born of a Jewish mother. Blinken turned the secular system of the American government into a racist and sectarian system in one fell swoop.
The next big protest movement in the U.S. may well be a popular uprising against paying taxes. Americans may ask, "Why do I pay taxes, if Washington, DC. is throwing away money on wars I oppose?"
Gaza is starving
Deliberating starving people amounts to war crimes and genocide under international law. More than 15 children have died from malnutrition in Gaza. The deaths are due not only to hunger but also dehydration. The elderly and small children are very susceptible to dehydration which causes the major organs to shut down.
The humanitarian aid trucks sit parked and idle at the gate to Gaza. Israel has prevented aid from coming to over 2 million Palestinians. Biden has only to pick up a phone and order the gate to be open and the aid to flow in unimpeded, but instead, he has asked the air force to fly over Gaza and drop pallets of food.
Israel has blocked humanitarian supplies to Gaza. On January 26, the International Court of Justice recognized the plausibility of Israel committing genocide and ordered it to allow the delivery of urgently needed humanitarian services and aid to Palestinians. However, since the court's ruling, the number of trucks Israel has allowed to enter Gaza has fallen to 57 a day - compared with an average of 147 a day before the ICJ ruling.
The hospitals are barely functioning with hundreds of wounded arriving each day, and now they are filling up with people in the last stages of starvation.