this post was submitted on 07 Feb 2024
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[–] cosmic_skillet@lemmy.ml 17 points 5 months ago

Israel does this all the time. Prisoner / hostage swap is pretty much standard operating procedure. It's why Hamas took hostages in the first place. Israel already traded back 240 Palestinian prisoners during the first truce back in November.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2023_Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_prisoner_exchange

What's going on now is negotiations. How many prisoners, exactly which ones, etc. The specific prisoners is likely the more salient point because Israel has effectively an inexhaustible source of Palestinian prisoners. It's a renewable resource. Meanwhile Hamas needs decades to plan a border raid so it can get a few hundred hostages to trade away.