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How the Gaza Ceasefire Agreement Highlighted Hamas’ Depravity
People stand next to flags on the day the bodies of deceased Israeli hostages, Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who were kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, are handed over under the terms of a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
The differences between Hamas and Israel can be seen not only in how they fight, but also in how they cease fighting.
More specifically, the terms of the ceasefire agreement, the first stage of which is now ending, are very revealing. All of the possible explanations cast a very negative light on Hamas — and thereby on its supporters.
Hamas was soundly battered during the war that began with its October 7th massacre in Israel. The other inhabitants of Gaza paid a very heavy price for that attack, which the majority of them supported.
While Israel had profoundly degraded Hamas’ capacity by the time of the January 2025 ceasefire, it had not eliminated Hamas and other terrorist groups in Gaza. Furthermore, it had only succeeded in freeing, or retrieving the bodies of, a small proportion of the hostages that Hamas and other Islamist factions in Gaza had taken from Israel.
This undecisive outcome, combined with external pressure to reach a ceasefire agreement, explains why neither party was in a position to dictate terms unilaterally. Nevertheless, the terms were remarkably lopsided in favor of the Palestinians.
Given that Hamas and Gazans bore many more fatalities and the overwhelming majority of the infrastructural damage and internal dislocation, Gaza appears to have had a much greater interest in the ceasefire itself, than did Israel.
Israel’s main incentive was the return of hostages taken on October 7. However, the asymmetry of the agreement is manifest in the number of convicted Palestinian criminals and terrorists released compared to the number of innocent Israeli hostages.
In the first phase of the ceasefire agreement, 33 Israelis (or their bodies) were to be released. In exchange, Israel agreed to release between 1,800 and 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom were lawfully convicted of crimes including mass murder and terrorism.
What explains such asymmetric terms in favor of the losing side? There are a few possible and overlapping explanations. They all reflect badly on Hamas.
The first possible explanation is that Israeli (and other) hostages in Gaza face much greater threats than do Palestinians in Israeli prisons. The latter are not in a life-threatening situation. They are not liable to execution at any moment. They are not kept on starvation diets, nor housed in unsanitary conditions in humid tunnels without light, or adequate ventilation. They have access to medical care (as Yahya Sinwar, architect of the October 7 attack, himself had when he was an Israeli prisoner).
There have been reports of some Palestinian prisoners being subjected to abuse, but even if those isolated examples did happen, there are important differences. Not least among these is that such abuse is illegal under Israeli law, with disciplinary action being taken at least sometimes. By contrast, abuse is the norm for hostages in Gaza.
However, to the extent that Palestinian prisoners are abused, the asymmetric terms of the agreement suggest a second explanation, namely that Hamas cares less about the welfare of Palestinian prisoners in Israel than Israel cares about hostages in Gaza.
The same is true about the valuing of lives. According to this explanation, Israel values the lives (and even the bodies) of its citizens and residents (of all religions) more than Hamas values the lives of Gazans.
The third possible explanation is that while Israel is a democracy ultimately accountable to an electorate, Hamas, as an authoritarian regime, is not answerable to Gazans. Even if there is some truth to the criticisms that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been unduly influenced by his own interests in weighing up the interests of the hostages relative to the goal of defeating Hamas, he is still inordinately more accountable to Israeli public opinion than Hamas is to Gazan public opinion.
There is nothing surprising in any of these possible explanations. It did not take the October 7 massacre, and the atrocities of that day and the many months since, for us to know that Hamas is indiscriminate in its violence. Instead, these events provided further and more horrifying evidence of what was already known.
We also already knew, from Hamas’s methods of waging war in multiple conflicts with Israel, that it cares very little about Gazan deaths. Indeed, it may attach positive strategic value to those deaths. Similarly, it is — or should be — no surprise that Israel is a democracy, and Hamas a repressive theocratic regime that treats its own citizens viciously.
What is dismaying is how many people, including in Western countries, have failed to draw these conclusions. Despite all the evidence, both in war and in ceasefire, they continue to side with the repressive theocracy of Hamas over the democracy that is desperately defending itself against an enemy that combines a medieval mentality and morality with modern munitions.
David Benatar is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town, and currently Visiting Professor at the Centre for Ethics, University of Toronto.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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