Yesterday Hamas released 24 hostages that have been held captive in Gaza for the past few weeks, and Israel responded by freeing 39 Palestinians from prison in the first stage of a swap under a four-day ceasefire that offers a brief glimmer of something resembling relief for both sides.
Of course occupying Israeli forces are storming the homes of families of released Palestinian hostages, seizing any celebratory items such as sweets, dispersing extended family members and advising parents and neighbors against expressing joy or any reasonable manifestation of happiness. I kid you not, those are the orders of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir. But even in a brief pause from the carnage, after 40-odd days that have killed thousands, driven three-quarters of the Gazan population from their homes and devastated residential areas, the scenes of Palestinian women and children returning home, some after spending years imprisoned by Israel, were a refreshing change.
It could be argued that even this hostage exchange with Hamas marks a point of no return for the apartheid state. Its illusion of deterrence has completely crumbled, and it can’t simply terrify its neighbors anymore. A group of resistance fighters from a blockaded land 25x5 miles in area forced the fourth largest military in the world to negotiate, albeit at a terrible price. But it’s hard to imagine the status quo of apartheid returning after what’s unfolded in Palestine in the past 50 days.
Increased supplies of food, water, medicine and fuel promised under the exchange deal began to stream into Gaza yesterday, where UN officials warned that Israel’s complete siege on the territory threatened to push it into starvation. But any sense of relief is tempered by the constant reminder that this short truce keeps Gaza mired in a humanitarian crisis and under the guaranteed threat that fighting will soon return. Always lurking in the back of everyone’s mind, the awareness that the destruction will resume shortly.
Side Items
Rare Good News: Derek Chauvin, the former pig from Minneapolis convicted of murdering George Floyd, was involved in a knife-related incident (stabbed) with another inmate yesterday and seriously injured at the federal prison he occupies in Arizona. No word on whether or not he’ll survive this tragic encounter