Gershon Baskin feels that the Israelis were accepting a cease-fire, calculating their steps in order to end this operation, and now the operation cannot be ended while Hamas is holding an Israeli soldier underground somewhere in Gaza
Gershon Baskin feels that Israel is not going to walk themselves into another situation of having to negotiate a prisoner release with Hamas, which will give Hamas another victory.
Middle East analyst Gershon Baskin said that all the fighters were equipped with suicide vests and that they had expected to die in terrorist attacks.
Gershon Baskin, who maintains close contact with Hamas’s political leadership, thinks that Muhammad Deif is a figurehead, a symbol, the spirit, the myth, and finds it hard to imagine that he’s actually a fully functioning human being.
Gershon Baskin feels that the loss of hope is the biggest thing. We need to create human relationships with people on all “sides”, talk to each other, listen with compassion, open up our hearts and minds to each other. Ultimately, no matter what the governments do, peace is made between people, on the human dimension. We can’t allow ourselves to fall into the pit
Gershon Baskin, mediador en la negociación por la liberación del soldado israelí Gilad Shalit en 2011, habla sobre la escalada de violencia entre Israel y Gaza y sus posibles consecuencias para la región.
Gershon Baskin, who helped establish a backchannel with Hamas in 2011, thinks that Hamas seeks more than an end to strikes. Hamas faced a choice between a cease-fire that met almost none of its conditions or rejection that gave Israel diplomatic cover for further escalation.
Gershon Baskin feels that if there’s one thing all parts of Hamas agree on, it’s that an Israeli attack on Gaza builds up sympathy for it there, the West Bank and the Arab world.
Gershon Baskin feels that Hamas hopes that their rockets will convince Israel to release the hundreds of Hamas operatives it arrested in its West Bank operation to rescue the three kidnapped Israeli teens.
UNRWA educates its clients to prepare to return to villages that they left in 1948, now located in the Western Negev, Ashkelon, Ashdod, BeerSheva, and Jaffa.