After nearly seven weeks in captivity, 24 hostages seized by Hamas in its deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel are now free after crossing into Egypt. In exchange, Israel released 39 Palestinians hours later at the city of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Biden reiterated his commitment to pursuing a two-state solution for long-term stability in the region and thanked the leaders of Qatar and Egypt for their partnership in securing the deal.
Large areas of Gaza have been devastated by Israeli airstrikes and tanks since the conflict began, leaving much of the territory’s 2.3 million people without electricity, food and clean water.
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, UNRWA said: “No matter how much they provide — it is difficult to meet demands of the whole” Gaza Strip, adding that “over-crowding and unsanitary conditions” were leading to the spread of disease.
The Hamas-controlled Gaza health ministry said that two people were killed and 30 wounded when Israeli soldiers opened fire on them in the early hours of the truce.
Meanwhile, at the Qalandiya refugee camp in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Raed Hhadeh, who teaches physics at a school in Ramallah, said he had mixed feelings about the cease-fire.
NPR’s Scott Neuman and Daniel Estrin reported from Tel Aviv and Brian Mann contributed from Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
The original article contains 1,252 words, the summary contains 180 words. Saved 86%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
A score is 20 so 24 hostages is not “scores”.
24 Hamas hostages + 39 Israeli hostages = scores of Palestinian and Israeli hostages.
I’m just surprised that they didn’t refer to the women and children held hostage by Israel as “prisoners“ or “detainees“, while referring to those held by Hamas as “hostages”. As if there’s some benign reason to capture women and children and then use them as currency if one party does it but not the other.
The Palestinian prisoners were not captured. They have been arrested, charged, or convicted of crimes. Most are considered minor violent offenses like throwing stones at police or soldiers.
Edit: added "arrested, charged "
But they were in captivity? Why even bring semantics into something like this?
They were arrested and jailed. The article should have done a better job not equating people convicted of crimes with people abducted from their homes as their families and neighbors were being murdered by a terrorist junta.
I’m guessing the author is trying to “represent both sides equally.”
They were arrested and jailed.
as a disclaimer, i don’t think i really know enough about the situation to comment on it holistically
that said, if a state wants to find a justification to convict somebody, it can find it
i don’t think that, in a war between two states, trusting what an instrument of one state says about an instrument of another is justification by itself
Nelson Mandela was also arrested and jailed by an Apartheid state.
We have no way to know if these people actually did anything wrong.
There should be a presumption of innocence.
I haven’t seen a published source but reporters are saying 233 of the 300 on the list of potential releases haven’t been convicted. Apparently, 270/300 are kids (or teens if you’re too young to think of teens as kids) and 33 are women.
You wouldn’t expect a lot to be convicted. Israel allows six month detentions of Palestinians based on secret evidence with no trial and the ones on the list were picked by Israel and are presumably not considered threats. (Palestinians who do face trial apparently go to a military court with a 99.7% conviction rate. I don’t know if that means “show trials” or “only slam dunk cases” but it’s probably relevant.)
P.S. I condemn Hamas extra hard. No one needs to chime in saying Hamas hostages don’t get trials or whatever. We all know Hamas would answer the trolly dilemma by exploding the trolly and killing everyone.
Plus we can add “10 Thai citizens and a Filipino citizen,” who are not part of the count.Edit, update sounds like they were part of the count. The text is still
10 Thai citizens and a Filipino citizen," were among those released Friday and were not a part of the truce agreement.
But earlier in the article it says they are part of the count.
They are.
13 Israeli hostages were released as part of the agreement with Israel.
11 were released as a seperate agreement with Thailand through Egypt.Noted. Either I didn’t read it properly or the article has been updated. Thanks for the correction.
Removed by mod
To be fair if you’re gonna use a measure like “scores” in 2023 you’re inviting criticism for using it incorrectly.
Only 24 hostages out of like 300 doesn’t feel likes “scores” of people to me. Maybe if a hundred hostages were released it would change that but 24 doesn’t seem like a big number considering the hostages have been held captive for almost two months in likely horrific conditions.
It’s a feel-good combined total.
People who were formerly captive are now free. Do you really want to split hairs about it?
Just out of curiosity what’s stopping Israel from imprisoning the same people after all hostages are either being freed or are being confirmed dead? It is not that they are not doing it though. And the other day there was a story of a woman who was imprisoned in 2015 for 8.5 years and now at the end of 2023 if my math isn’t wrong she should be released anyway.
