Things seem to have moved after the Cabinet meeting this morning, but there are some pretty big caveats:
[The announcement] will stipulate the need for the release of all the hostages still held by Hamas and be based on a guarantee the terror group no longer rules Gaza, sources say.
Also made me wonder how Starmer’s conversation with Trump went yesterday. Not good?
I mean, as I said elsewhere, there’s plenty to get annoyed about without also imagining new things. If an organisation kidnaps a bunch of civilians with a view to using them for extortion, those captives are hostages, and it is different to when even that very same organisation captures soldiers in a war, because those captives are POWs. Words do actually have a meaning! Not every usage of words is a matter of some overarching nefariousness!
There is no difference between what Hamas did and what Israeli regime does both are extra judicial detention aka kidnapping.
Okay, but, not to be excessively pedantic here, the question was not ‘Are they both kidnappers?’ (which, if a state can be said to kidnap people, then yes, I agree, they are), but ‘Are all the captives hostages?’ which, as I keep saying, is not at all clear.
But this isn’t even a comparison which makes the Israelis look good! With hostages there’s an implied intent to eventually release them (in exchange for whatever you want to extort). One of the reasons the Palestinians held by the Israelis aren’t hostages is that Israel clearly has no intention of releasing them.
Abducting people without any demands from the captors is worse
Yes, that’s what I said in the comment you’re replying to.