Today, Thursday…the day that the first Israeli and foreign hostages were to be released from Gaza, is now delayed 24 hours until Friday…maybe.
My fingers are crossed that it happens. Every hostage taken from their homes and lands in Southern Israel deserve to come home as unbroken as is possible under the circumstances of Israel’s super aggressive response, and free to live their lives in the future. There is no doubt that given the last 50 days or so, with communications cut here and there, electricity cut, clean water cut, and an increasing food shortage, change in weather conditions, which will all lead to disease, the sooner they are out, the better for all.
What happens if and when all the hostages are released from Gaza is anyone’s guess, as the “world order” still has no plan!
However, on the other side of this 24/7 story of the “obvious” hostages, are the less obvious hostages, those detained without charge, for weeks, months and even years. Palestinians detained inside a prison on their own lands of Palestine, inside the West Bank, on the outskirts of Ramallah.
Many are women and children, prisoners the Israelis would call them. Hostages I have called them for 20 some years now, since I stood on top of a hill with a pair of binos watching them exercise in a small yard or be taken from building to building. I was shocked at how young some of them were.
I was also shocked that although filmed from a distance by the US media team that I was working with, they were not allowed by their network back home to tell the story! At the age of 46 I was shocked more than once at things I would see along with the media, yet they wouldn’t be allowed to news gather that particular story for the world to see.
Most of these Palestinian “hostages” are small fry. Held for throwing stones at Israeli tanks. Flying Palestinian flags…yes…inside Palestine…the West Bank. Getting up into the faces of “settlers” who are about to evict them from their land, etc etc.
In my view they are there to be used at some point, like right now, as hostage swaps for Israelis taken by Hamas, as has happened in the past.
However, as awesome as it will be for both sides to be freed, the real Palestinian prisoners who have been jailed for years and CAN make a difference to peace, security for both sides, and a long awaited two state solution, will NOT be freed, they will remain in jail, and these people are jailed inside of Israel. Individuals as I’ve mentioned before such as Marwan Al Barghouti (often described by both moderate Palestinians and Israelis alike as Palestine’s Nelson Mandela), he will not be released, because just like the sociopathic leadership of Hamas not wanting a two state solution, then neither does the sociopathic leadership of today’s Israel.
However the hostage swaps may pan out, I’m sure that the fighting will go on…air superiority of one side over the other, heavy artillery superiority of one side over the other, tank superiority of one side over the other, human and technical intelligence superiority of one side over the other…yes, an army, navy and air force superiority over a side with neither.
At the end, if this latest already extremely bloody and lawless (by both sides) conflict continues as it has, if there are any Palestinian civilians left or not, inside the broken Gaza Strip, some seriously tough and extremely intelligent people, but even more importantly people with NO ties to either side, economically or politically, need to come to the front soonest, and negotiate with all sides for peace.
No longer this going around in circles for decades “puppets” of big business from the US and the UK, and the gutless individuals who are having a lovely comfy life at the HQ of the UN, who are all playing this filthy game for way too long now, while the normal civilians go on suffering.
I wish all of the hostages their freedom and a great ongoing life. I wish every moderate Israeli and Palestinian a peaceful life for the future…even though in truth I know that it’s still a pipe dream away, until there are sit down meetings from everyone speaking the hard truths.
But for that to take place, it needs humans and not sociopaths to lead the way forward.
Bob Shepherd 