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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial looms large over all of this. If he were to lose power, he would be far more vulnerable to conviction and potential imprisonment. So from this vantage point, the Al Jazeera ban could be seen as an act of desperation - muzzling a high-profile critic as a concession to far-right parties, even at the expense of free press principles, all in service of his own political and personal survival.

It paints a troubling picture of a leader whose decision-making is distorted by clinging to power at all costs. Undermining democratic norms to appease extremist coalition partners is a dangerous road that could lead Israel to more illiberal and authoritarian policies, especially toward Palestinians, the Arab media, and domestic dissent.

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It was a very strange day yesterday: the whole week coverage had been building up to a meeting in Cairo, Hamas signalled they were going to accept the cease fire.

Saturday AM EST, it was reported that Hamas confirmed they were going to accept the deal. By noon Saturday EST, the "Israel-Hamas War"...idk what to call it, live blog? collection-of-news headline?...was gone for the first time in months.

Israel reporting (not just Haaretz) reported huge, multiple, protests (it was at night there, early afternoon EST) due to Israel rejecting a cease fire. Piecing it together from Twitter natsec people, standard blob, certainly not polarized against israel, Israel didn't even send a delegation to the talks, and the far right Israeli leader said Bibi promised him they wouldn't accept "a rushed deal" (i.e. the cease fire), and people were irate. An irate Israeli TV reporter revealed the anonymous "diplomatic source" promising no deal Friday night was Bibi himself.

The blogs are back up now, with a sort of hurried framing that the talks fell apart because Hamas wanted a permanent cease fire (no mention of any of the above -- I assume that'd complicate it too much for, it needs to be a nice little set piece of Israel vs. Hamas.

It's really, really strange watching the coverage the last week, in America, without any attachment to either "side". I guess its easier to push the A vs. B framing on a new subject, our college kids, rather than trying to explain how any of this makes any sense at all.

Netanyahu has also said that he intends to do an operation in Rafah regardless of whether Hamas gives up the remaining hostages.

https://text.npr.org/1248276817

Israel's war aims have transparently been about both returning the hostages and removing Hamas from power.

I am just pointing out that Israel isn't planning on agreeing to a ceasefire anytime soon. They'll probably need to have new elections.

> Israel isn't planning on agreeing to a ceasefire anytime soon

A permanent one, no. But that wasn't ever on the table. A multi-week ceasefire is absolutely still on the table in exchange for hostages.

"We might agree to a cease-fire for a little bit, but I guarantee you will invade you soon anyway" is not exactly what I'd call good faith language. What's even the point of a cease-fire if you don't at least offer the possibility of something long-term? It's a completely absurd thing to say.

This has long been the problem, with the Israeli government never offering any perspective or hope on a long-term solution.

That seems very good faith and transparent. Bad faith would be saying, 'yeah we are happy with a permanent cease fire', getting all the hostages, and then continuing the assault.

Agree that the logic kind of pushes Hamas into keeping the hostages so not sure what Israel is expecting and most likely Israel has just marked the hostages as dead and will do anything to permanently destroy Hamas and show other potential beligerents that the deterrent strategy is concrete - even though that means a death sentence for most of those hostages still alive.

> What's even the point of a cease-fire if you don't at least offer the possibility of something long-term?

To get aid to civilians. To let fighters regroup and restock. To open a window for negotiating a permanent ceasefire.

I can't think of an example of a permanent cease fire being immediately agreed without surrender or withdrawal.

> open a window for negotiating a permanent ceasefire.

Israeli government already very clearly and explicitly said that this window doesn't exist; that was my entire point. If he had said "we MAY still invade" or anything even slightly more qualified, then sure. But he didn't. Unless something went spectacularly wrong in translation, what I read is that he said in very clear terms that Israel will absolutely invade.

Whether that's just empty threads or not is a judgement call, but it's certainly not the language of good faith.

> But he didn't. Unless something went spectacularly wrong in translation, what I read is that he said in very clear terms that Israel will absolutely invade.

A temporary ceasefire also creates room for the opposition to create pressure to call for elections. That’s difficult to do while a war is ongoing.

I think what you're getting at - and which is the critical thing that seems to keep getting forgotten is the critical situation of the hostages. Everything from both sides is rotating around the hostages and we are still not yet in a classical war so much as an extreme hostage negotiation with many layers of force including jets, tanks, and infantry driving the negotiations.

Well I'm not really "getting at" anything per se, other than point out that the diplomatic behaviour of Netanyahu is not especially brilliant and is kind of sabotaging the negotiations.

I think it is much easier to understand the situation if we take Netayahiu at his own words. He does not want any ceasefire, he has said so in the past, and he keeps saying that now. His actions are consistent with the fact that he does not want any ceasefire, as he tries to vandalize any prospects of a ceasefire, even a temporary one, e.g. by wowing to invade Rafah, even if there is a ceasefire.

The timing of this ban on Al Jazeera is also consistent with his behavior of trying to vandalize any ceasefire talks. Al Jazeera is a Qatar based media company, and Qatar is also the mediator in the ongoing talks. If Netanyahu wanted these talks to be successful he would not antagonize the mediator this way.

No, the Israeli government does not want a ceasefire, neither a permanent one, nor a temporary one. What they want is to make it look like they are making an effort, but only enough to improve the optics. There may be a faction inside the military which actually wants a ceasefire, so perhaps—and hopefully—a ceasefire can be negotiated despite vandalism attempts by the Israeli government, but I’m not hopeful.

In the meantime, I do take Netanyahu at his words, that he does not want a ceasefire, and he wants in invade Rafah, to continue the genocide, and to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.

I agree with most of your comment, but I'll push back on a couple of things:

> No, the Israeli government does not want a ceasefire, neither a permanent one, nor a temporary one.

All the things you wrote before that are things that Israel explicitly says, that it won't agree to a permanent ceasefire. But this statement is your personal opinion, and I don't think it's necessarily justified.

> In the meantime, I do take Netanyahu at his words, that he does not want a ceasefire, and he wants in invade Rafah, to continue the genocide, and to ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians.

I think your phrasing on this is misleading, since it implies that Netanyahu's words are that he wants to "continue a genocide" and "ethnically cleanse Gaza of Palestinians". That is incorrect. Are words are that he will invade Rafah, the "continue the genocide/ethnic cleansing" thing are your words, not his. (I highly disagree with using those words, but either way, my point stands.)

You are right, actually. It is too late for me to edit, but from the second paragraph onward I needed to prefix with “I think”.

Rereading it I can see how this is misleading, that was not my intention.

Thank you, and for what it's worth, I didn't think you were being intentionally misleading (just came out misleading in the phrasing).

It's impossible to disagree with -- we have to eliminate the terrorist military leadership that perpetrated a massacre. Why would they get a permanent cease fire?

To your point, in my varied Israeli media diet, it's well-understood in the entire Israeli press that Bibi went out of his way to torpedo it by saying this simple idea over and over. The only question is whether this show he has a spine (willing to lose an eventual vote just to defeat the terrorists), or that he's weak (willing to lose the hostages to retain his political position) A majority is weary of it because the implementation of the specifics is "we will work our way through the refugee camp and then ???" and they feel they've seen that plan before.

We can confirm this is from an unbiased perspective by noting that the protests kicked up a notch, and the TV presenter outed the anonymous diplomatic source as him, and then perusing original sourcing as to why. (to share something I learned re: sourcing, Haaretz will be seen as some interlocutors as a left-wing rag doing performances for overseas audiences, Times of Israel is better)

Of course it was, that's what Hamas always told it wanted.

Unless by negotiation table you mean "whatever Israel wants and nothing else".

"transparently" or "allegedly and repeatedly" ? People have been protesting precisely because absolutely no progress have been made towards freeing the hostages, on the contrary. So obviously "return of the hostage" is a simple mantra to which Israeli government pay some lip service. What they actually plan to do with Hamas or Gaza people in general remains to be known, we have all reasons to question every single word coming from them.

Its stated war aims, at the outset.

By this point these aims appear to have evolved, and it now seems primarily concerned with encouraging what it refers to as "voluntary migration" from the Gaza Strip. And as a secondary aim, to incrementally expand the settlements in the West Bank (in the hopes of securing their eventual annexation).

> Israel reporting (not just Haaretz) reported huge, multiple, protests (it was at night there, early afternoon EST) due to Israel rejecting a cease fire.

Correcting you on this - the protests were not because Israel "rejected a cease fire".

For one thing, these are the same protests that happen every Saturday for the last few weeks of the war, continuing the "tradition" of protests that happened every Saturday for the ~10 months before the war.

For another, Israel didn't "reject" the ceasefire deal, Hamas did, or at least that's the way it is being talked about by Israel itself. There are many reasons to think Israel (and specifically Netanyahu) may have tried to tank the deal, but Hamas are the ones that eventually walked away.

You're right that there's been protests. The claims in the post, not sending a delegation, Bibi's anonymous statements being deanonymized, and the protests this weekend being intensified and a subject hostages families spoke about at the protests are all verifiable.

Yes I don't disagree with any of those.

I share similar view. Israel response is guided by prime minister’s personal political ambitions, while war is ongoing, the leader has more power and less of a chance to be replaced.

He's playing with the same rulebook of Slobodan Milošević - He's trying to make apparent to everybody that if he goes down, his own country will go down with him.

Frankly, it feels like the only hope for an end to this conflict is in the hands of the internal Israeli political opposition. I wouldn't be surprised if he's not stopped, we're gonna see the same... "approach" used with Palestinian people applied to whatever internal resistance is left.

IIRC something like 80% of Israeli citizens approve of the way Israel is fighting in Gaza, according to the polls.

it would be interesting to know to what extent they're aware of what's actually happening in Gaza.

Also, given the vilification we've seen of those expressing sympathy for a two-state solution or the general Palestinian population in the last 30 years, I'd be wary to take at face value any poll without being sure they were done with some sort of guarantee of anonymity.

I'm pretty sure you'd get even more one-sided approval results asking the British about the handling of the Ireland border during the troubles, or the Spanish on the repression of the Basque population after Zaragoza.

I'm pretty sure you're right on that last bit, but I don't think that wouldn't be reflecting the reality in UK or Spain, either. People are generally pretty quick to get into an "us vs them" mode when threatened, and, once there, will come up with increasingly ludicrous justifications even for the nastiest stuff.

And yes, in Israel right now it's probably somewhat affected by social (and sometimes legal) consequences of dissent... but those very social consequences are in and of themselves indicative of supermajority support. Point being, even if it is, say, 65% rather than 80%, that still means that opposition has no power, and so nothing is really in its hands at the moment.

> it would be interesting to know to what extent they're aware of what's actually happening in Gaza

I suspect that most don't know. I've sometimes seen articles in Times of Israel, and although they mention that lots of civilians are getting killed, they also write that this is Hamas health ministry counting, suggesting that the numbers would be made up.

Look here:

> At least 34,596 Palestinians have been killed [...] the Hamas-run health ministry in the Strip says.

> The figures cannot be independently verified and include at least 13,000 Hamas gunmen Israel says it has killed in battle

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/hamas-run-healt...

So, Times of Israel writes as if information provided by IDF would be trustworthy (13 000 gunmen). But from what I've seen, when reading e.g. about the Lavender AI system and IDF's replies, then, the IDF generals and spokespeople lie a lot, and it's better to disregard anything they say.

Someone living in Israel, might be inclined to trust the IDF. However, looking at how many women have been killed, and realizing that a similar number of civilian men have been killed too -- then, more likely, 80%? 90%? of those "gunmen" were in fact civilians, but IDF happily counts each dead man as a terrorist.

And Times of Israel is not even a right wing newspaper. (Seems it's "centrist", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Times_of_Israel.)

(With that said, most Palestinians and AlJazeera readers don't know what Hamas did on October 7. Not all but most Israelis and Palestinians are blind to the bad things that happen to those in the other tribe, know only about the bad things that happened to themselves.)

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