Netanyahu has also said that he intends to do an operation in Rafah regardless of whether Hamas gives up the remaining hostages.
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.
This has long been the problem, with the Israeli government never offering any perspective or hope on a long-term solution.
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.
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.
> 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.)
Rereading it I can see how this is misleading, that was not my intention.
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.
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.
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)
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.
Unless by negotiation table you mean "whatever Israel wants and nothing else".
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).