A senior Hamas official told me that the “Trump concept” proposed to Hamas was that they release all Israeli captives immediately as an “initial gesture” and Trump would promise to call for an end to the “war” and push Israel to negotiate terms. No formal framework was provided.

https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1964681474596352440

Hamas has said repeatedly it is ready to negotiate a comprehensive deal that involves releasing all Israelis at once. But the terms matter and the Hamas official cited the Edan Alexander situation where Trump did not uphold the U.S. agreement after he was released from Gaza.

Israel and the Trump administration are once again pushing false narratives about Gaza ceasefire negotiations. There has been no real progress at all, according to Palestinian negotiators. Israel remains entrenched in its demand that it will continue the genocide & occupation. Hamas has repeatedly offered concessions in an effort to make a deal. It has also agreed to relinquish governance of Gaza. But Hamas has been clear from the start that it will not make an agreement that allows the continuation of the genocide or open-ended occupation by Israel.

⚡️Hamas says it has responded to Witkoff proposal with its own suggested changes. “This proposal aims to achieve a permanent ceasefire, a comprehensive withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, and ensure the flow of aid to our people,” Hamas said in a statement. “As part of this agreement, ten living Israeli prisoners held by the resistance will be released and eighteen bodies will be returned, in exchange for an agreed-upon number of Palestinian prisoners.”

No specific details have been confirmed about the amendments and changes Hamas requested in order to sign an agreement. For background: We published the ceasefire proposal Hamas agreed to May 25, which gives a good sense of the issues they want amended in the current Israeli-Witkoff draft:

dropsitenews.com/p/israel-hamas…

Important context: Ansar Allah (the Houthis) have made clear they will not cease their Red Sea maritime operations against Israel. They offered to stop attacking U.S. ships if the U.S. stopped bombing Yemen. Ansar Allah said it is coordinating its ops with Palestinian resistance.

https://twitter.com/dropsitenews/status/1919802783395352638

Also, Trump claimed Ansar Allah “capitulated” and doesn’t “want to fight.” This is clearly false. Ansar Allah has made clear it will not cease until the blockade is lifted against Gaza and that it will take its lead from the Palestinian resistance forces on the ground in Gaza.

🚨We obtained the draft of a Gaza ceasefire deal currently being pushed by the U.S., Egypt, and Qatar.

The new proposal includes significant changes that Hamas is unlikely to accept, including the disarmament of Gaza. Details below 🔽
dropsitenews.com/p/new-gaza-cea… Hamas has been offering a multi-year deal where all Israeli captives would be immediately released in exchange for a large number of Palestinians held by Israel. Hamas wants a long term hudna guaranteed by the U.S., Egypt, Qatar and potentially other nations.

NEW: The New York Times Ignored Source’s Doubts About Hamas Docs Provided by Israel

A key figure in verifying an incendiary story that sought to link Iran to the October 7 attacks reveals what he actually told the paper. Read the full story from me and @sharifkouddous at @DropSiteNews 🔽

dropsitenews.com/p/new-york-tim…

Israel's Ch. 12 says Trump's team told Israel that "immediately" after his inauguration Trump would remove any delays or embargoes on weapons shipments. This narrative pretends Biden has actually implemented any meaningful withholding, which he has not. ⬇️ Over the past year, Biden has facilitated Israel's genocidal war in Gaza and its attacks against the West Bank and refused to stop it. The Biden-Harris administration is responsible for creating ideal conditions for Trump's emerging Israel First national security team.

Full statement from Abu Obeida, the spokesman for Hamas’s Al Qassam Brigades, on the killing of the six hostages in Gaza announced Sunday by Israel.

He appears to confirm they were killed by their guards as a result of a change in policy implemented after a previous Israeli rescue operation in Nuseirat in June. Here is the statement:

“Netanyahu and the occupation army alone bear full responsibility for the deaths of the captives, as they deliberately obstructed any prisoner exchange deals for narrow interests, in addition to intentionally killing dozens of them through direct airstrikes.

“We say to everyone, clearly, that after the Nusseirat incident, new instructions were issued to the fighters assigned to guard the captives regarding how to deal with them in the event the occupation army approaches their detention location.

“Netanyahu's insistence on freeing the captives through military pressure instead of making a deal will mean their return to their families in coffins. Their families must choose: either dead or alive.” Yesterday, a senior Hamas official, Khalil Al-Khayya said that Hamas had lost contact more than three months ago with the people guarding dual U.S.-Israeli citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin and four other captives after intense Israeli bombing.

Al Qassam Brigades had announced that publicly on its social media channels on May 13. Al-Khayya told Al Jazeera yesterday, “Since that day nothing has been known about his life.”

Here was the announcement from Abu Obeida posted May 13:

Iran’s Fars News Agency said Hamas political leader Ismail Haniyeh was assassinated at around 2am local time in some sort of air strike on a residence in a housing area for Iranian IRGC war veterans in northern Tehran. Hezbollah has not officially confirmed the death of senior commander Fouad Shukr in an Israeli strike in a Beirut suburb Tuesday, but said he was in the building where at least 4 people were killed and dozens injured. Hezbollah said it is waiting to determine its response.

Regarding rumors about Israeli officials facing indictment by the ICC, some relevant context: In 2002, Pres. Bush signed into law a bipartisan bill that authorizes the U.S. to use force to liberate any U.S. or allied personnel charged with war crimes.

Known in the human rights community as "The Hague Invasion Act," it also lists as “persons authorized to be freed” from the ICC through U.S. actions “military personnel, elected or appointed officials, and other persons employed by or working on behalf of the government of a NATO member country, a major non-NATO ally (including Australia, Egypt, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and New Zealand), or Taiwan.” It is important to note that these rumors that the ICC may hand down indictments against Israeli officials started via Israeli media outlets, likely from Israeli sources (though the reports say sources in the Hague). It is quite possible that Netanyahu or his minions are behind these leaks for their own political reasons (that are not entirely clear at present).

On March 4, @theintercept published a story about how Kibbutz Be’eri denied a report in the NYT regarding the sexual assault of two girls on October 7. The NYT told us they stood by the reporting. Our story is here:



Now, the NYT reports on a new video filmed by an Israeli soldier who discovered the girls that completely undermines the NYT report. And the NYT now quotes kibbutz residents as saying it was false.

Yet the NYT has not retracted it on the original Screams Without Words story, which has won a Polk Award and is constantly cited as the definitive account of systematic sexual violence by Hamas on October 7. The NYT has serious questions to answer about how this false story made its way into the “paper of record.” The new story about the video is here:

theintercept.com/2024/03/04/nyt…
nytimes.com/2024/03/25/wor… Instead of retracting the story and issuing a correction, the NYT has added an “update” that constitutes a spin job within its original story aimed at exonerating itself for not actually verifying such a serious allegation before printing it:

The president of the ICJ is Judge Joan Donoghue, former top legal advisor under Hillary Clinton at the State Department during the Obama Admin. She will imminently read the court's ruling on South Africa's request for emergency provisional measures in Israel genocide case. The court could rule entirely in South Africa's favor and order all of the measures requested, including directing a halt to Israel's attacks and siege against Gaza. It could dismiss it entirely or it could rule in favor of only some requests or create its own tailored orders.

Israel’s representative Tal Becker tells ICJ that South Africa’s case “profoundly distorted factual & legal picture,” claiming it seeks to erase Jewish history. Says their argument is “barely distinguishable” from Hamas’s rhetoric, accuses them of “weaponizing” the term genocide. Becker called October 7 "the largest calculated mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust.” Says the court must understand the "brutality and lawlessness” of the force Israel is fighting in Gaza.

South Africa's legal team begins argument at ICJ by saying, "South Africa has recognized the ongoing Nakba against the Palestinian people." South African lawyer Adila Hassim: Israel has engaged in a “systematic pattern of conduct from which genocide can be inferred.” It has subjected the people of Gaza to “one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare” by sea, land and air.

This was a pernicious lie that was promoted by Biden and his administration to justify Israel’s attacking of hospitals. Those of us who warned that this was a lie at the time were accused of being Hamas propagandists.

https://twitter.com/rollingstone/status/1737982283536060834

Here is my article from Nov. 21 about Al Shifa and how Biden gave Israel political cover to lay siege to the hospital:


theintercept.com/2023/11/21/al-…
theintercept.com/2023/11/21/al-…

A few thoughts about the issue of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the credibility of the US and NATO: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a bald faced act of aggression, replete with war crimes, and is rightly being condemned as such by large numbers of people and nations across the globe.

The questions from reporters here are solid. And the answers from the State Department spokesperson are, unfortunately, not shocking. This is a bi-partisan horror and Joe Biden has a very long history of defending Israel's gratuitous violence and killings.

https://twitter.com/TheNationalNews/status/1391873402709872646

No one should pretend the US is some neutral party in what Israel is doing right now. Throughout his career, Biden has repeatedly supported Israel when it kills women & children. Ex-Israeli PM and war criminal Menachem Begin once said Biden was too extreme even for him on this.

Amy Klobuchar has been a significant participant in the racist criminal justice system in Minnesota and nationally. As a prosecutor she pushed for harsher prison sentences against nonviolent offenders & boasted of police support for her policies. Just last year, Klobuchar pushed for hundreds of millions of dollars more for police, as my colleague @akela_lacy reported: theintercept.com/2019/05/14/amy…

Great job to the 10 Democrats who voted *against* the Wyden-Daines amendment that would have prohibited FBI warrantless surveillance of web browser history. Special shout out to Bernie Sanders who didn’t show up to vote. It was defeated by *one* vote. Remember this vote next time one of these 10 Democrats or Sanders tells you that Trump is the most dangerous president in history. They just facilitated outrageous surveillance powers for William Barr and the FBI.

The DeVos & Prince families have a long record of financing the most dangerous right wing extremist individuals & causes in the country. They gave the seed money to the radical religious right, poured money into anti-choice groups & are funding the current coronavirus "protests." One of their most prized politicians is Mike Pence. We focus a lot on Trump, but Pence is their rock. The fact that he is in charge of the administration's COVID-19 response is terrifying to anyone who knows his history and that of the DeVos/Prince financial militia.

People attacking Sanders for endorsing Biden are either being disingenuous or didn’t study Sanders’ career. He chose to run in the Dem Primary. He played by its rules. People who supported Sanders with eyes wide open knew this was a given if he lost. He told you he would do it. Sanders could have spent 2016-2019 mobilizing a 3rd Party. But he wouldn’t do that. He never has advocated that path. Ask Ralph Nader about Bernie and 3rd parties. You can be angry or disappointed, but don’t pretend Sanders ever stood for a different outcome if he lost.