re: #22 lawhawk

And now I’m seeing reports that dispute that the Kerry proposal allowed the Israelis to continue ops against the tunnels in Gaza (allowing them to essentially continue the fight inside Gaza), but rather would have required the Israelis to pull back the ground forces inside Gaza.

Ha’aretz is continuing to report the original claim that IDF would continue tunnel ops.

It looks like there were several versions being contemplated, but Hamas wasn’t going to accept any of them without pushing all kinds of preconditions (like prisoner releases):

According to the source who spoke to the New York Time, Kerry is offering a two prong solution which begins on Sunday with a seven day hiatus in fighting.

In the second stage, the moment the temporary ceasefire comes into effect, Israeli and Palestinian officials - and international delegates - will begin negotiating the security, economic, and political issues of the Gaza Strip.

The source said one major disagreement was over Israel’s wish to leave soldiers in Gaza during the ceasefire. Government spokesman Mark Regev said Hamas chief Khaled Mashal has “put so many preconditions on a cease-fire so as to make it impossible.”

However, Palestinian sources spoke to Al-Hayat and said Hamas had agreed, in principle, to a different ceasefire deal, according to which the humanitarian ceasefire will last for five days and begin on Saturday.

The report did indicate however, that Hamas had demanded guarantees on additional issues like the release of prisoners and the expansion of fishing rights.

According to the report, Kerry gave a guarantee that the siege of Gaza would end when a ceasefire is reached without any additional warranties such as the release of prisoners. The newspaper reported that during the five day ceasefire, negotiations would be held in Cairo to come to reach a permanent agreement.

Oh, and the al Wafa hospital? That was apparently one of the tunnel origination points.

This map shows why we continue in our mission to expose and destroy Hamas’ network of terror attack tunnels. pic.twitter.com/snPnupv0ud

— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) July 24, 2014