November
25, 2023
The
exchange came on the first day of a Qatari-brokered four-day cease-fire that is
slated to see at least 50 Israeli hostages exchanged for at least 150
Palestinian women and children held in Israel.
Palestinians celebrate as released
Palestinian prisoners arrive in Ramallah after being released from Ofer
Prison on November 24, 2023.
The
first 24 Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were released Friday evening in
exchange for 39 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli prisons.
The
exchange came on the first day of a Qatari-brokered four-day cease-fire that is
slated to see at least 50 Israeli hostages exchanged for at least 150
Palestinian women and children held in Israel. The office of Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that the pause would be extended a day for
every additional 10 hostages released.
"It's
a sign of hope for Palestinians and Israelis that the cease-fire will continue
and the killing will stop," Mohammed Khatib, who watched the release of
the first Palestinian prisoners Friday, toldBBC News.
The
pause in the fighting has also allowed much needed aid trucks to enter Gaza.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
said that 200 aid trucks were sent from Israel Friday, of which 137 were
unloaded by the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees in the
Near East, U.N. Newsreported. It's the largest convey of aid to enter Gaza
since Israel's bombardment began October 7.
"Hundreds
of thousands of people were assisted with food, water, medical supplies and
other essential humanitarian items," OCHA said.
Four
trucks full of gas and 129,000 liters of fuel also arrived in Gaza Friday.
However,
Hamas has reportedly delayed the release of more hostages Saturday because it
says Israel is not allowing aid to enter northern Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.
The group said Israel had also violated the terms of the cease-fire by shooting
tear gas and live ammunition at people who attempted to return to their homes
in northern Gaza and by flying surveillance drones high over Gaza Saturday.
Hamas
took around 240 hostages—both Israelis and foreign nationals—into Gaza during
its October 7 attack on Israel that also killed around 1,200 people. On Friday,
the group released 13 Israelis, including an 85-year-old woman and children as
young as 2, as well as 10 Thai nationals and one person from the Philippines,
The Guardian reported.
"Each
of them is an entire world," Netanyahu said in response to the first
release. "But I emphasize… we are committed to returning all the hostages.
This is one of the aims of the war and we are committed to achieving all the
aims of the war."
The
families of the Thai hostages celebrated their return.
"We
are all very happy. Everybody is crying," Rungarun Wichangern, the brother
of 33-year-old Vetoon Phoome who was released Friday, toldThe Guardian.
Phoome,
who was working on a potato and pomegranate farm near Gaza when he was
captured, was one of 30,000 Thai nationals working in the agricultural sector
in Israel before the war, and one of around 5,000 employed at farms near Gaza.
The Thai government said that 20 more Thai nationals were still being held in
Gaza.
The
one Philippines hostage released was 33-year-old Gelienor "Jimmy"
Pacheco, who had been working as a carer in Gaza. Philippine President
Ferdinand Marcos said on social media that he was "overjoyed" by
Pacheco's release, and that he was safely at the Thai embassy in Israel.
"I
salute the work of the Philippine Foreign Service in securing his release, and
once again thank the State of Qatar for their invaluable assistance in making
Jimmy's release possible," Marcos said.
Another
Philippine woman, Noralyn Babadilla, remains missing.
Meanwhile,
jubilant crowds turned out in the West Bank to welcome the first Palestinian
prisoners released from Israeli custody, according to BBC News. The group
included 24 women and 15 teenage boys. They had been arrested for offenses
ranging from stone throwing to attempted murder. While some had been convicted,
others were awaiting trial. Of a total of 300 Palestinian women and children
marked by Israel for potential release, less than 25% have been convicted.
Israel
holds around 8,000 Palestinians in its prisons, 3,000 of whom were detained
since the October 7 attacks, Al Jazeera reported. Nearly every family in the
West Bank has had a relative detained at one point, according to BBC News.
The
NGO Palestinian Prisoners' Club said that Israel had told the families of
released prisoners that they could be fined around 70,000 shekels ($18,740) for
sharing sweets to celebrate their loved ones' return, speaking to reporters, or
having guests over.
One
of the Palestinian prisoners released was 24-year-old Marah Bakeer, who was 16
when she was arrested for allegedly attempting to stab an Israeli soldier,
something she and her family deny. Israeli forces shot her in the arm and hand
12 times before her arrest.
"I'm
very happy of course, but I feel devastated by how that deal was reached… at
the cost of our brothers' and sisters' lives in Gaza," Bakeer said.
The
Israeli attack on Gaza has killed more than 14,800 people, around 10,000 of
them women and children. This means Israel has killed women and children at a
rate that outstrips the deadliest conflicts of the 21st century, The New York
Times reported Saturday. More than double the number of women and children have
been killed in Gaza in nearly two months of fighting than have been reported
killed in Ukraine in two years. Using women and children as a conservative
stand-in for overall civilian deaths would mean more civilians have died during
these two months than were killed by U.S. forces in the first year of the Iraq
War, and nearly as many as the 12,400 estimated killed by the U.S. and its
allies during nearly two decades of war in Afghanistan.
"It's
beyond anything that I've seen in my career," Marc Garlasco, a former
Pentagon senior intelligence analyst who now advises the Dutch organization
PAX, told the Times, adding that, for a comparison, one may "have to go
back to Vietnam, or the Second World War."
The
bombardment has also destroyed or damaged more than 60,000 buildings, and some
Gazans used the pause in the fighting to return to their homes and survey the
damage.
"Our
home is destroyed, nothing remains standing. And most of the ducks and chickens
were eaten by hungry street dogs," one older woman toldAl Jazeera.
"This is not a war; it is a genocide."
How Long will Palestinians go on being Scapegoats for the West’s
Atrocities in WWII?
November
25, 2023
If
an Arab writer would create a Palestinian version of Schindler’s List, and if
an Arab, or a filmmaker sympathetic to Arabs, would create the movie, I wonder
what the story would look like. I wonder what the writer would write. I wonder
what the filmmaker would create.
How
much do we know about Gaza when it is described as an open-air prison?
How
much do we know about the genocide in Gaza perpetrated by Netanyahu?
Maybe
we don’t know anything. We have no idea about the pain Jews suffered throughout
the years. And we have no idea about the pain Palestinians suffer now. But we
can relate to each pain when we compare the pain we suffer.
Let’s
talk about two kinds of pain: physical and psychological.
When
it comes to physical pain I think about toothache, headache, cancer surgery,
and amputation. I think exile, witnessing murder, depression, and dealing with
rape’s aftermath are psychological pains.
Did
Jews recover from the pain they suffered during the holocaust?
Can
we expect Palestinians, or Arabs for that matter, to recover from the genocide
in Gaza?
The
best line I’ve read so far is written by Adam Shatz in the London Review of
Books:
“As
for the people of Gaza, not only are they being forced to pay for Hamas’s
actions: they [Gazans] are being forced, once again, to pay for Hitler’s
crimes.”
What
is the solution then?
As
a peace journalist and peace activist, I still don’t know how to address
atrocity. I have experienced atrocity myself. I know that both physical and
psychological pain is so great that I don’t know how to talk about it. After
years of therapy, nightmares, sweaty dreams, sleepless nights, and feeling
shame, and guilt, I still think that Nonviolence is the key to winning a
genocide, a holocaust … to defeating atrocities and heartlessness.
I
understand that it is easier to talk about nonviolence than to do it. I know.
But, there is no better alternative. I know because I’m talking from
experience.
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