2023-11-25 23:12:30
Seventeen hostages held in the Gaza Strip for weeks were released Saturday evening, on the second day of a truce between Hamas and Israel which released 39 Palestinian prisoners in exchange.
This truce, the result of an agreement under the aegis of Qatar, offered a new day of respite to the inhabitants of the besieged territory following seven weeks of war, triggered by a bloody and unprecedented attack by Hamas on Israeli soil on October 7 .
The Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of the Islamist movement, announced that they had handed over 13 Israeli and four Thai hostages to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) shortly before midnight. Hamas, which initially announced the release of seven foreigners, later revised its figures, and Qatar and Israel confirmed.
Egyptian television footage showed the convoy of hostages passing into Egypt through the Rafah crossing in the southern Gaza Strip, and Israel later said they had arrived in Israel.
Blocking
The Palestinian Islamist movement announced in the followingnoon that it was delaying the release of this second group of hostages, following a first Friday, accusing Israel of violating the agreement, particularly concerning deliveries of humanitarian aid to the north of the territory.
The Israeli army, which has denied any breach of the agreement, considers the northern third of the Gaza Strip as a combat zone housing, according to it, the infrastructure center of Hamas, which took power in 2007. It ordered the population to leave and prevents anyone from returning.
Despite this warning, thousands of displaced Gazans took advantage of the break in fighting to try to return home to the north. And according to the Hamas Ministry of Health, seven of these people were injured on Saturday by Israeli fire.
The spokesperson for the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Majed Al-Ansari, later indicated on X that “the obstacles to releasing the prisoners” had finally been “overcome”.
Late in the evening, the Israeli Prison Authority announced that it had released a second group of 39 Palestinian prisoners, all women and young people under the age of 19.
“Take Them Out of Hell”
The agreement, also concluded with the support of the United States and Egypt and entered into force on Friday, provides for four days of truce which should allow the release of 50 hostages and 150 Palestinian prisoners. This pause, renewable, also includes the entry of humanitarian aid and fuel into Gaza.
The Israeli bombings, incessant since the October 7 attack and the military offensive on northern Gaza, have stopped, as have the Islamist movement’s rocket attacks on Israel.
On Friday, the first 13 Israeli hostages, women and children, were handed over to the ICRC and returned to Israel via Egypt to reunite with their families. Hamas also released ten Thais and one Filipino, who were not part of the deal.
In return, Israel released a first group of 39 Palestinians, also all women and young people under the age of 19.
In Israel, relatives of the hostages still held in Gaza are waiting in anguish for an end to a nightmare that has lasted for seven weeks.
In Tel Aviv, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in the evening on Hostage Square to demand their release. “Get them out of hell,” read one banner.
“Huge pressure”
“Today, we are happy to see our loved ones return but we must not forget all those who have not yet returned,” testified Yael Adar, the daughter-in-law of Yaffa Adar, 85 years old and the oldest of the former -hostages, on the Ynet news site.
Yael Adar’s son Tamir, a 38-year-old father of two young children, remains hostage following being kidnapped like his grandmother from the Nir Oz kibbutz in southern Israel.
According to Israeli authorities, 1,200 people, the vast majority civilians, were killed on October 7, and 240 people were taken hostage.
In retaliation, Israel promised to “eliminate” Hamas, classified as a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, relentlessly bombing the Palestinian territory and launching a ground offensive on October 27, until the truce. .
In Gaza, 14,854 people, including 6,150 children and young people under the age of 18, were killed by Israeli strikes, according to the Hamas government.
Israeli army chief of staff General Herzi Halevi has warned that the war is not over. “We will resume attacking Gaza as soon as the truce is over…to dismantle Hamas and create enormous pressure to bring back as quickly as possible as many hostages as possible, down to the last of them,” he said.
Hospitals overloaded
In the occupied West Bank, scenes of jubilation, amid fireworks, Palestinian flags and various movements including the green banner of Hamas, accompanied the return of the prisoners released Friday evening.
In East Jerusalem, occupied by Israel since 1967, demonstrations of joy were, however, prohibited.
The young woman was sentenced in 2015, when she was 21, to nine years in prison for attempted murder of an Israeli border guard.
The truce provides a moment of respite for thousands of internally displaced people in Gaza who have left hospitals and schools in the south of the territory where they had sought refuge to return home.
Hospitals in the south of the Gaza Strip continued on Saturday to receive many wounded evacuated from the North. But according to Ashraf al-Qidreh, spokesperson for the Hamas Ministry of Health, “they no longer have the reception capacity or the equipment” to deal with this influx.
“It feels good”
More than half of the territory’s housing has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN, and 1.7 million people have been displaced, out of 2.4 million inhabitants.
Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from northern Gaza have massed in this part of the territory since the start of the war to try to escape the bombings.
The truce allowed the acceleration of the arrival of humanitarian aid in Gaza, subject to a total siege by Israel since October 7. These cargoes, whose entry from Egypt is subject to the Israeli green light, have been arriving in recent weeks in dribs and drabs.
In addition, six Palestinians were killed during incidents with the Israeli army on Saturday in the West Bank, including four in Jenin, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Nearly 230 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli settlers and soldiers in the West Bank since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas
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