“Officials said that Israel and Egypt were prepared to let foreigners leave the Strip which is under heavy Israeli bombardment, but Hamas had refused.”

  • ???@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    From the footage at Rafah, feels like hundreds of foreign nationals are gathered waiting an okay from Israel and Egypt. I don’t see WHY Hamas would even care to stop Palestinian Americans from leaving to the states.

    • GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Hamas intends to use those people as leverage to get their home countries to exert pressure on Israel. Hamas is basically taking them hostage.

      • tocopherol@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Is there any source for that idea, or that this is actually happening? The only source for this article are US officials, who are full-throated allies of Israel, so there likely could be a bias. Telegraph is widely known as biased.

        • GratefullyGodless@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I’m just saying that a group that has taken ACTUAL hostages certainly isn’t above using foreign nationals as quasi-hostages to pressure other countries to exert influence on Israel to get them to stop shelling Gaza.

        • ???@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I have failed to find any statement made by Egypt to confirm this.

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        1 year ago

        It’s not like that stops Israel from butchering civilians anyway, so again how does this work?


        To downvoters: It’s a fact that Israel is killing civilians while trying to kill Hamas fighters. After killing nearly 8.5k civilians, they got maybe a couple of dozen of Hamas fighters “dead”, but how would they even be able to confirm it when they aren’t in Gaza? It’s a known indisputable fact that the so-called “human shield” used by Hamas has never stopped and will never stop Israel from shooting or bombing the civlian population.

        But again, it’s because “proximity shielding” is something countries made up so they can do genocide or accomplish whatever urban warfare goal while at the same time not giving a single fuck about the lives of civilians or hostages in that area.

        • danhakimi@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Their intent is that by their “martyring” Palestinian civilians, they’ll be able to use their deaths as PR against Israel.

          Yes, that is a cynical take. That’s how Hamas operates.

          • ???@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            I think there was no intent. I think Israel used proximity shielding like the US did as an excuse to kill civilians.

            • danhakimi@kbin.social
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              1 year ago

              why do you people think Israel wants to kill civilians? Do you really think the IDF is just hundreds of thousands of monsters who love killing? What is wrong with you people?

              • ???@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                Because it keeps doing so, documented by far too many human rights organizations and bodies already for nothing to have changed.

    • Ð Greıt Þu̇mpkin@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      They don’t see the Palestinians, they see the Americans, and Americans are hostages and also decadents who deserve being knocked down a peg

      • ???@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Hmmm… Pretty sure the majority of those looked like American Palestinians. They are not bargaining chips since not even their own government cared enough to lift a finger and get them out.

      • ???@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Pretty much, yes. In fact they have caused road problems on two occasions that took days of repair.