The release of hostages from the Gaza Strip agreed between Israel and the Islamist Hamas has been delayed. “The start of the release will take place in accordance with the original agreement between the sides and not before Friday,” Israel’s security adviser Tzachi Hanegbi said late on Wednesday evening. According to information from Qatar, the exact time of the ceasefire will be announced on Thursday. A spokesman for the Qatari Foreign Ministry said this morning that this would happen “in a few hours.”
Hamas had declared the day before that the agreed break in fighting should begin on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. CET. Accordingly, the first exchange of hostages kidnapped in Israel for Palestinian prisoners was expected on the same day. Meanwhile, according to the Israeli army, there was another rocket alarm in the border area on Thursday morning.
Army spokesman: Repatriation of the hostages may take time
“Talks about the release of our hostages are progressing and will continue on an ongoing basis,” Hanegbi said on Wednesday evening. Military spokesman Daniel Hagari had previously announced that the Israeli military was preparing to implement the first phase of the agreement, but that the return of the people abducted to the sealed-off coastal strip could take time and would take place in several stages.
According to the Times of Israel, an Israeli official explained the delay by saying that, contrary to the Israeli side’s previous view, both Israel and the Islamist Hamas must first sign a document ratifying the agreement in order for it to come into force. The document will hopefully be signed within the next 24 hours so that the first hostages can be released on Friday. The “Jerusalem Post” spoke of a “last-minute complication.”
Both sides had previously agreed on a maximum ten-day ceasefire in Israel and the Gaza Strip. Part of the agreement is an exchange of up to 100 hostages from Israel for up to 300 Palestinian inmates in Israeli prisons.
Israel’s air force strikes Hezbollah
The Hezbollah militia in Lebanon, which is linked to Hamas and is also hostile to Israel and has repeatedly engaged in violent clashes with Israel’s military since the beginning of the Gaza war almost seven weeks ago, is not part of the agreement, according to the “Jerusalem Post”. The incidents on the border with Lebanon, which threaten to escalate, have no influence on this. Meanwhile, Israel said it attacked pro-Iranian militia targets in Lebanon on Thursday night.
Security circles: Elite members of Hezbollah killed
The Israeli military reported that warplanes had attacked Shiite militia infrastructure. Hezbollah said at least five of its members had been killed. Among them is the son of the chairman of Hezbollah’s parliamentary bloc in the Lebanese parliament, Mohamed Raad. As the German Press Agency learned from Lebanese security circles, they were members of Hezbollah’s elite brigade, Al Radwan. Accordingly, a house in the village of Beit Yahoun in southern Lebanon was hit.
There are concerns that the Gaza war could spread to Lebanon. Hezbollah is considered more influential and significantly more powerful than Hamas. Hezbollah is also considered Iran’s most important non-state ally and is part of the self-proclaimed “Axis of Resistance”, a front of militias with the aim of fighting Iran’s arch-enemy Israel.
Biden: Let’s work for the release of all hostages
US President Joe Biden welcomed the deal with Hamas and assured Israel’s government that it would work to release all hostages. Biden discussed in a phone call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday that a ceasefire would allow urgently needed humanitarian aid to be brought to the Gaza Strip, the White House said.
Israel’s army: Tunnel uncovered under Shifa hospital
The Israeli army says it has uncovered further parts of a suspected Hamas tunnel system under the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip. The military released videos and images on Wednesday evening showing additional entrances to tunnels as well as underground rooms and hiding places. The Israeli armed forces suspect that the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip is a Hamas command center.
Just a few days ago, during the controversial operation in the clinic, the military discovered a shaft that, according to the army, leads to a tunnel section, at the end of which there was an “explosion-proof” door after 55 meters. As the army has now announced, behind the recently broken door there is an air-conditioned room and a bathroom as well as other shafts. According to the military, the tunnel system extends under the entire hospital building and other buildings in the area.
According to military spokesman Hagari, the results of the survey are evidence of Hamas’s “deliberate approach to operating under hospitals.” The clinic was specifically used as a weapons depot and Hamas command center. Hamas denies this. The information could not be independently verified.
Red Crescent evacuates 190 people from Shifa Hospital
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, more patients were evacuated from the hospital during this time. The aid organization said 14 ambulances and two UN buses brought 190 injured and sick people, their companions and some medical staff to hospitals in Khan Yunis and Rafah in the south of the Gaza Strip. It remained unclear how many of the 190 were injured and sick. “Many other injured people and their companions, along with medical staff, are still in the hospital.”
The evacuation with the support of the United Nations (UN) took almost 20 hours, the Red Crescent said. The convoy was hindered and extensively searched at a checkpoint that separates the northern and southern Gaza Strip. The lives of the wounded and sick were endangered as a result.
Israel: All Hamas leaders doomed to die
Netanyahu had previously said that the war in the Gaza Strip against Hamas would continue after the ceasefire agreement was implemented. His Defense Minister Joav Galant said all Hamas leaders would be killed, according to the Times of Israel. “The fight is global: from the armed men in the field to those who have fun in luxury jets while their emissaries attack women and children – they are doomed to die.”
As a first step, the agreement between Israel and Hamas involves the exchange of 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners within four days. In a second step, up to 50 more Israeli hostages are to be exchanged for up to 150 more Palestinian prisoners in smaller groups. Only when the hostages are in Israel will the families be notified in order to “not raise false hopes” among the relatives of those held in the Gaza Strip who are to be freed, the “Jerusalem Post” wrote on Thursday.
Terrorists from Hamas and other groups carried out unprecedented massacres in southern Israel on October 7th, killing around 1,200 people and kidnapping around 240 hostages to Gaza, including Germans. Of the 240 people abducted, four female hostages have so far been released by Hamas. A young female soldier was freed from the military. The army also found the bodies of two women. How many are still alive in total is unclear.
What will be important on Thursday
It is unclear when the agreed ceasefire will come into force. According to reports, the release of the first hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners in Israel will begin on that day.
