Ms HammondChief Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya said earlier: 'We have received assurances from the brotherly mediators and the US administration, who have confirmed that the war is completely over.'He promised that 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel would be freed, alongside 1,700 Palestinians from Gaza who were arrested since the war began.'Here are some of the 250 Palestinians serving life sentences in Israel and the atrocities they carried out as reported in the Spectator."Mahmoud Qawasmeh, a 45-year-old senior Hamas member who was previously released during the lopsided 2011 Gilad Shalit terrorist-for-hostage exchange. He then went on to orchestrate the 2014 kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teenagers, for which he was re-arrested only last year in March. He is due to be released under the new Trump plan.What are the bets that in future Qawasmeh will go on to murder again and be arrested a third time (probably after hiding in some UN-affiliated hospital) and then released yet again in some future lopsided hostages for terrorists deal?Another terrorist slated to be released this week is Imad Qawasmeh, currently serving 16 life sentences for organising a double suicide bus bombing in which 16 Israelis were killed and over 100 injured in 2004 in the southern city of Beersheba. Among the victims was a three-and-a-half-year-old boy killed while sitting on his mother’s lap. (Twenty-thousand Hamas supporters in Gaza took to the streets to celebrate that attack the next day, according to Reuters.)Then there is Morad Bader Abdullah Adais, a 25-year-old Palestinian convicted of stabbing to death with a kitchen knife Daphna Meir, a 39-year-old Israeli mother of six. After the murder, he allegedly returned home to calmly watch a film with his family.Next up is Hilmi Abdul Karim Muhammad Hammash: sentenced for coordinating a Jerusalem suicide bus bombing in 2004 that killed 11 Israelis and wounded 50 others.It is not just terrorists from Hamas who are set to be freed. Iyad Abu al-Rub, a terrorist from the even more radical Islamic Jihad group, who was convicted of orchestrating a series of deadly suicide bombings in Israel that killed 13 people between 2003 and 2005, is to be released. The suicide bombs he planned included one at a dance club in Tel Aviv, another at a shopping mall in Netanya, and a third at an outdoor food market in Hadera, north of Tel Aviv".Everyone wants the hostages held in Gaza to be released. But this kind of terrible deal-making will surely only encourage the future kidnapping of other innocent people by terrorists in order to secure the release of other murderers.The terrorist group Hamas seems to have got a very good deal and is still alive and rampant even though it now seems preoccupied with fighting a local grudge war with other Gazan Arab Palestinians.BBC News: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cg5e551j593o'At least 27 people have been killed in fierce clashes between Hamas security forces and armed members of the Dughmush family in Gaza City, in one of the most violent internal confrontations since the end of major Israeli operations in the enclave.Masked Hamas gunmen exchanged fire with clan fighters near the city's Jordanian hospital, witnesses said'.(Hospitals being places which Hamas infiltrates to hide for protection amongst civilians). To my mind this proves what I have always believed regarding the Middle East conflict.That is to some it is not just a desire by Arab Palestinians to annihilate Israel and the Jews but a seeming blood lust within these people that is also directed amongst themselves. Hamas must however still be destroyed one fighter at a time. But were I to be a released Palestinian terrorist I would be nervous.The IDF and Mossad have long memories and an even longer reach !
John Hawkes ● 6d