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Israel has carried out repeated attacks in Gaza and killed about 100 Palestinians over the past two weeks since the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal with Hamas came into effect. Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, is one of the few Western journalists in regular contact with Hamas leaders. “It’s utter malpractice on the part of all of these news organizations that have not regularly been interviewing the leaders, the negotiators of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. This is, by default, allowing the dehumanization narrative of Palestinians to just take hold,” he says.
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Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to Gaza, where Israel has carried out repeated attacks, killing about 100 Palestinians over the past two weeks since the U.S.-backed ceasefire deal with Hamas came into effect. Israel has also continued to restrict the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza in defiance of a ruling last week by the International Court of Justice, as Palestinian families are still in urgent need of food, clean water, fuel and shelter. Instead of the approximately 600 aid trucks per day pledged by Israel, it’s reportedly allowing in only about 80 to 90 trucks a day.
As part of the truce, Hamas released all the Israeli hostages, agreed to release the bodies of deceased hostages. Hamas says it’s working with the Red Cross and others to search for the remaining bodies. The main group representing families of hostages is calling on Israel to refuse to proceed to the next phase of the truce until the final 13 hostages’ bodies are returned. This is Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian.
SHOSH BEDROSIAN: What I can share with you is the team is using between two to three excavator machines and two to three trucks to search for our deceased hostages. Now, the Red Cross and the Egyptian team are allowed entry beyond the IDF’s yellow line position into Gaza territory to conduct the search for our hostages.
AMY GOODMAN: Gaza authorities say an estimated 10,000 Palestinians may be trapped under the rubble, and have called for access to the same equipment used to search for the dead Israeli hostages.
Meanwhile, UNRWA, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, warns people in Gaza are increasingly in need of warmth, as cold weather approaches, writing in a social media post, quote, “Shelter materials and winter supplies for displaced families are sitting in UNRWA warehouses in Jordan and Egypt, blocked from entry.”
For more on the ceasefire, violations of the deal, and if it’ll last, and what the next steps are, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of Drop Site News, where he’s been closely covering the Gaza ceasefire. He’s the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army and Dirty Wars: The World Is a Battlefield.
Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Jeremy. If you could start off — I mean, you’re in a really unique position. You’re one of the only Western journalists to regularly interview Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. You broke the story that they had accepted the ceasefire deal, more than half an hour before President Trump announced it. Talk about where you see it standing today.
JEREMY SCAHILL:…