Gershon Baskin on hostages in Israel-Hamas war: ‘The time for negotiations is still open’

An attack by Hamas kills Israeli soldiers. An Israeli hostage is taken to the Gaza Strip and kept off limits to the Red Cross. To secure his freedom, Israel’s military unleashes a barrage of strikes that kills scores of Palestinians.

That scene describes the circumstances of the summer of 2006, along the same envelope of the Middle East that today is again both a blood-soaked battlefield and dungeon for hostages.

Today’s war also has claimed far more people – 1,400 in the Oct. 7 Hamas raid in Israel; more than 9,000 in Gaza since, according to health officials in the Hamas-run territory. What’s more, the 2006 raid captured a single soldier; an estimated 240 languish inside Gaza, of numerous citizenships, including an estimated ten Americans.

Still, what happened then can offer insight about how this fighting may end – or at least pause.

Josh Robin – Anchor and Chief National Political Reporter of Spectrum News interviews someone key to rescuing Gilad Shalit, that Israeli soldier captured almost twenty years ago.

Gershon Baskin is an Israel-based peace activist, whose close contact with a top Hamas official helped bring Shalit home more than five years after his abduction. In return for Shalit’s freedom, Israel freed more than 1,000 Palestinians imprisoned in Israel – including four people found responsible for killing Baskin’s wife’s cousin.

“I think that the time for negotiations is still open,” Baskin told me of today’s hostages, even as Israel encircles Gaza City.

Baskin also discussed the role of Qatar, the small country on the Arabian Peninsula that hosts both a major U.S. military presence and Hamas leadership; whether a wider peace is possible; and the fate of his relationship with the Hamas official who helped broker the Shalit deal.

Read the original Spectrum News article here.