ISRAEL-HAMAS CEENTO COANO IN GAZA, keeping hope alive for the second exchange of Palestinian hostages and prisoners

Tel Aviv – Like the fragile The ceasefire between Israel and Hamas Marking its sixth day, the US-Israeli designated terrorist group released the names on Friday of the next four Israeli hostages it says will be released on Saturday, in exchange for 200 more Palestinian detainees currently held in Israeli prisons. The hostages named by Hamas are Israeli soldiers, according to a statement given by a Hamas official earlier in the week.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office confirmed in a brief statement that it had received the list of Hamas hostages on Friday, but did not immediately confirm the identities of the female soldiers expected to return home on Saturday.

There are currently seven Israeli women still believed to be in Gaza, including five IDF service members and two civilians. One of the civilians is Arbel Yehoud, who was kidnapped in the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz and whose last chilling message to escaped Ariel Cunio was: “We are in a horror movie.”

The other is Shiri Bibas, who was taken with his two young children Ariel and Kfir. Hamas has claimed that Shiri, Ariel and Kfir were later killed in an Israeli bombing raid. In a television interview in June, then-Israeli Minister Benny Gantz indicated that the government knew what had happened to the Bibas family, but said he could not provide details.

A Hamas official has said that under the terms of the ceasefire According to the agreement, for every Israeli soldier released, Israel should release 30 prisoners who received life sentences and an additional 20 prisoners who received long sentences.

Netanyahu’s office said he would release a list later on Friday of the Palestinians he intends to free in the next exchange. Most of them are expected to be women, as were the approximately 90 prisoners freed in the first exchange on January 19, hours after the ceasefire agreement went into effect.

Hamas’s launch of First three hostages A week ago, three Israeli women, including a double British national, were revealed in images broadcast around the world. Red Cross vehicles were first seen driving towards Gaza City before sunset, in a sign that a deal was on the way. In one of the largest squares in Gaza City, the door of a Hamas vehicle was opened and Romi Gonen, 24, Emily Damari, 28, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, bolted to a Cross car Roja waited as masked Hamas militants climbed atop the cars and thousands of onlookers watched.

If the next four Israelis are released as expected on Saturday, 89 hostages, both alive and dead, would remain in Gaza, according to Israeli officials, including seven US nationals: Keith Siegel, 65, of Chapel Hill, Carolina northern; Sagui Dekel-Chen, 35, who grew up in Bloomfield, Connecticut; and Edan Alexander, 19, of Tenafly, New Jersey.

Four other Americans are believed to have been killed during the 15 months of war.

Gaza Cease Fire tested, but holding

In Gaza, the ceasefire has been Tested by isolated violence This week, but it has remained.

Israeli tank shelling killed two Palestinians on Thursday in the first bloodshed since airstrikes stopped on Sunday morning. Israel’s military said its forces in southern Gaza had opened fire on armed and masked suspects who were moving toward troops and posing a threat. The IDF said the incident occurred east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and in the area of ​​the Kerem Shalom border crossing with Israel, through which some aid trucks are now delivering food, water and medical supplies.

The UN says more than 650 trucks carrying food and other humanitarian supplies arrived in Gaza on Thursday, slightly above the 600 per day agreed to in the ceasefire agreement.

The tens, if not hundreds of thousands of displaced Gazans have been anxiously awaiting next weekend, preparing to begin returning freely to the decimated north of the enclave, as also agreed to in the agreement. A grim indication of what awaits them has already been discovered by those who have returned to their homes, or what remains of them, in the south.

Returnees have found entire neighborhoods reduced to rubble, and even without the heavy machinery truly necessary, they have begun the work of rebuilding and the grim task of finding and excavating the remains of loved ones. Nearly 200 bodies have been found since Sunday, but the Hamas enclave’s Civil Defense Rescue Agency estimates that more than 10,000 bodies are still under the rubble, and accepts that some may never be found.

In Rafah, Mohammed Mustafa Hamad Qeshta told the CBS News team in Gaza on Wednesday that an IDF strike killed his brother Ibrahim 261 days earlier.

“Today we took him out with the broom,” he shouted. “The whole house collapsed and fell on him. We called the civil defense, asking for help to recover his body. They kept saying they will do it, but they are delayed and we want to get his body out. We decided to dig out ourselves and get him out. family to tell them we found it.”

Ibrahim’s mother, Sameera Masoud al-Shaer, told CBS News she was elated to at least have closure.

“I’m happy, and these are tears of joy,” he said. “I’m glad I found him. This is the best moment. I was waiting for the ceasefire so I could see him. This is the best moment of my life. Thank God the wall fell on him and we were able to find the whole body and the dogs didn’t eat it.”

While the ceasefire in Gaza has held, the IDF has redirected its focus and firepower this week on what it says are Iranian-backed militants in the West Bank, the much larger Palestinian territory that Israel has long occupied. .

The IDF Operation launched “Iron Wall” On Tuesday, a day after President Trump rescinded a Biden-era executive order that had imposed sanctions on some Israeli settlers in the West Bank that were deemed a threat to peace and security.

At least a dozen Palestinians have been killed and dozens more wounded since the IDF offensive began, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in the West Bank.

On Friday, the United Nations denounced what it called Israel’s “anti-war” methods in the West Bank operation.