“Officials said that Israel and Egypt were prepared to let foreigners leave the Strip which is under heavy Israeli bombardment, but Hamas had refused.”
From the footage at Rafah, feels like hundreds of foreign nationals are gathered waiting an okay from Israel and Egypt. I don’t see WHY Hamas would even care to stop Palestinian Americans from leaving to the states.
Hamas intends to use those people as leverage to get their home countries to exert pressure on Israel. Hamas is basically taking them hostage.
Is there any source for that idea, or that this is actually happening? The only source for this article are US officials, who are full-throated allies of Israel, so there likely could be a bias. Telegraph is widely known as biased.
It’s not like that stops Israel from butchering civilians anyway, so again how does this work?
To downvoters: It’s a fact that Israel is killing civilians while trying to kill Hamas fighters. After killing nearly 8.5k civilians, they got maybe a couple of dozen of Hamas fighters “dead”, but how would they even be able to confirm it when they aren’t in Gaza? It’s a known indisputable fact that the so-called “human shield” used by Hamas has never stopped and will never stop Israel from shooting or bombing the civlian population.
But again, it’s because “proximity shielding” is something countries made up so they can do genocide or accomplish whatever urban warfare goal while at the same time not giving a single fuck about the lives of civilians or hostages in that area.
Their intent is that by their “martyring” Palestinian civilians, they’ll be able to use their deaths as PR against Israel.
Yes, that is a cynical take. That’s how Hamas operates.
They don’t see the Palestinians, they see the Americans, and Americans are hostages and also decadents who deserve being knocked down a peg
Right now, the Israelis are bombing the Rafah crossing and blaming Hamas for the dead.