On Our "Virtual Route 99" Around Our World: An Alternative View of the Gaza Deal

We have just launched and updated our exclusive tagline, "Virtual Route 99" , in honor of our home state of California and the Central Valley of California as State Route 99 is now the main route through California's Central Valley.

As part of this ongoing journey, our team hereby presents an alternative on the Gaza War  and the aftermath is hereby noted courtesy the Team at the COOP SCOOP:  

The Dark Side of The Gaza Deal Thousands held by Israel as hostages will remain captive The Coop Scoop Oct 13 October 13, 2025 By Marc Cooper This will be a relatively short post as my time this week is occupied by an ill family member — who will be just fine. Not to worry. I cannot, however, remain silent on the Gaza hostage deal. Of course anything that even pauses the war even for an hour or a day and frees hostages is a good thing — even if Red Mad Hatter Trump played a role in it. As I write this late Sunday night the first hostages have been released. What I cannot take is how the media is obsessing over the 20 living Israeli hostages being released as being the center of the bigger picture. Of course their liberation is an unqualified good thing. The release that is— not the abysmal bathos media coverage. Reporters are minute by minute interviewing friends and relatives of the former captives as they bring them right into our living room and as if there are no other humans involved in this horrendous conflict. I want to be very precise here as I am sympathetic to the 20 hostages and their families. Make no mistake. But they are not the only people engaged in this filthy war and by far not the only victims. If anything, their ongoing captivity was exploited nakedly by Netanyahu to justify the unnecessary prolongation of his massacre of thousands of innocents, the destruction of their homeland and to keep his corrupt tuchas out of court and ultimately out of jail. Meanwhile, there are approximately TWO THOUSAND Palestinians prisoners or hostages being released by Israel about whom we know and are told absolutely nothing. We are not shown the pain, anguish and desolation of any of their friends or families. The networks apparently can’t bother to get a camera into Gaza or the West Bank to interview them. The freeing of the 20 Israelis is truly authentic human drama. The 2000 Palestinians being released along with their families and loves ones, on the other hand, are simply erased or ignored as if they and their families are less than human and no more than asterisks. Add to that, the Palestinians are being returned not to comfortable homes but rather to piles of bombed out rubble where their own families and friends have until this week been pushed to the edge of deliberate starvation. No TV newsworthy stories there? Israel currently holds 11,000 Palestinians in prison who allegedly received some version of due process. That’s quite a hefty number. But did you know there’s another 1500 Palestinians who are imprisoned in “preventive detention” — jailed with NO due process, no right to appeal and all with an indeterminate sentence. That is identical to being a hostage. Tell me the difference if you can. Actually, they are more like being disappeared. We hear nothing, zip, zero about them. And many are teenagers. Of the Palestinians being released, we don’t know how many of them are among those held with no trial and no definite sentence and how many are “ordinary prisoners.” We don’t know because the media flat out ignores them. And there is no provision in this new deal that Israel will suspend this cruel and inhuman policy going forward. Will we see any INTIMATE human rejoicing by the families of any Pals being freed? I doubt it. If there’s any coverage it will be of large crowds firing rifles into the air. The slaughter of 1200 Israelis two years ago by Hamas was a first grade war crime by what remains a terrorist sect. So is the holding by Israel of 1500 prisoners with no trial and no release date. Let’s keep that little fact in mind when we see the jubilant Israeli family members in the hours to come. And that is giving Israel the huge benefit of the doubt that the other 11,000 processed “ordinary” Palestinian prisoners had fair trials and deserve being jailed — which is frankly a bit of mental acrobatics. Here’ some other bullet points about the cease fire. That’s what it is, a cease fire. It is not a truce or peace settlement in itself. It can collapse at any moment. Under the terms of the agreement in this so called Phase One, Israeli troops will still occupy about half the Gaza strip. There will be no full withdrawal until or unless Hamas disarms which I find highly unlikely. I have no truck with Hamas but it would be rather unrealistic to expect them to stand bare handed against Israel. The Palestinians who have already lost 62,000 people will now be herded into scattered enclaves around the strip, much like Native Americans were, to use the words of Jewish Currents editor Peter Beinart. The West Bank which settlers have been using as a Palestinian shooting gallery over the last year will continue to be over run by more and more illegal Israeli settlements and it is a foregone conclusion that Israel will attempt to annex it very soon making any already remote two state solution geographically impossible. The deal that Netanyahu accepted is the same one he refused to accept more than a year and 20,000 lives ago. As the gangster he is, he only gave into a bigger more powerful gangster known as Donald Trump who got fed up with him. Trump pushed this deal not for humanitarian reasons but rather because one of his captains, Netanyahu, became unruly and disobedient to the capo. The breaking point came when Israel bombed the capital of Qatar a few weeks ago which was not only the best interlocutor between among all sides but is also an American ally, hosts a strategic American military base, and does big time billion dollar business deals directly with the Donald Trump Crime Family. That’s why Trump jumped in to put an end to the rogue operations of Street Captain Bibi who was cutting into the boss’s territory. I celebrate even a short pause in the war. We can hope that this morphs into some sort of truce and sustains itself to halt the genocidal offensives of the IDF and can hope the Palestinians are lucky enough that it will lead to the end of Hamas as Gaza’s primary political force . But only the blind and the naive can try to believe this is a significant step toward a final settlement. It isn’t. Not even remotely. There will be no lasting peace in Israel unless or until the Palestinians have the right to self-determination. It’s about that simple. In the meantime, we should remember the 20 Israeli hostages, as worthy as they of freedom, are but a tiny sample of the massive number of victims of this hapless adventure. +++