The This is intercepted. Welcome to Intercepted, I'm Jeremy Skahill.

And I'm Bertaza-Hossain.

Well, Maiz, there's a lot to talk about this week.

In a few minutes, we're going to be talking with the great Judith Butler but before we we get to that

interview I want to ask you your sense of where things are right now with the Netnahu

government appearing to be ready for a full-scale invasion of Rafa.

Of course, Rafa has been attacked repeatedly, but this presumably would be a much more intense full scale ground operation even as there's

reports that the Biden administration is trying to push for some form of a deal where

Hamas would release 33 of the Israelis that they're holding in return for some

as of now undefined pause in the Israeli attacks, but your thoughts on this moment, the political situation, and the threats coming out of

Tel Aviv.

What's been a very eventful few days, we had the reports suggesting that a peace deal could

be imminent, in fact, that would end of conflict for a predetermined period of time.

But on Tuesday, Netanyahu indicated that whether there is a deal for hostages or not, the war

will continue and the attack on Raffa will continue.

And he said explicitly that we're going to enter Raffa with or without a deal.

So what indicates to me, and most observers I would say too, is that this war was not really about the hostages and

it's not currently about the hostages either because Netanyahu's had many

opportunities to free the hostages in a peace agreement for a ceasefire or a

permanent peace agreement and reportedly even from the first days of the war

came out recently that Hamas apparently had offered full release of hostages in exchange

for the IDF not coming to Gaza on the ground.

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