Dialogue over a second exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, which seemed like a distant hope just a week ago, has been progressing day by day since Israeli soldiers on Friday killed three of their kidnapped compatriots whom they mistook for Palestinian militiamen in a surprising mistake . .
Any revelation about the incident increases pressure on Benjamin Netanyahu's government to negotiate a second exchange after two and a half months of war in which it chose massive bombings over the release of the hostages. First it was learned that the abductees were bare-chested waving a white flag (to show that they were not hiding weapons) and that one of them was chased to death in a building while shouting to the soldiers that he was one of their own . The army later admitted that the hostages had written two messages in Hebrew with the texts “SOS” and “Three hostages” using leftover cloth and food. Help”. The military interpreted it as bait for an ambush.
This Wednesday the local press reported another discovery that adds salt to the wound. Five days before the incident, a camera attached to a dog from the military dog unit recorded the cries of “help” from one of the hostages. Nobody saw the images in real time. The army discovered it too late when it recovered the body of the dog (which had been killed by Hamas militants before being shot down by Israeli soldiers) last Monday and checked the recording.
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There are still about 130 hostages in Gaza, an unknown number of them dead, after dozens were swapped for three times as many Palestinian prisoners in the last week of November. Until now, their relatives feared that the kidnapped people would lose their lives in one of the numerous and massive air strikes, that their health would fall victim to the precarious conditions or that their kidnappers would murder them. Their new fear is that because of overzealousness they will end up in bags like the three did on Friday.
Explosion following a bomb attack this Wednesday in Rafah in the Gaza Strip. SAID KHATIB (AFP)
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The hierarchical profile in which it moves reflects the progress of the dialogue. The leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniye, traveled to Egypt this Wednesday (one of the mediators, along with Qatar and the USA) to take part in the negotiations. Also traveling will be a delegation from Islamic Jihad, a smaller and more radical armed group that also took part in the massive Oct. 7 attack and took hostages. Aware of the changing mood in Israel regarding a new exchange, both Hamas and Islamic Jihad have violently entered psychological warfare in the last 48 hours, releasing videos of hostages in their hands.
It also appears to be no coincidence that the Palestinian armed groups have not fired rockets against Israel since Tuesday afternoon during the dialogue in Cairo, although the shooting has been sporadic for weeks due to the militants' difficulty moving, transporting the projectiles and firing them from the surface of an invaded and guarded Gaza Strip.
40 hostages for a week's ceasefire
According to the information portal Walla, Israel is offering an agreement to take 40 people hostage during a week of ceasefire. It would continue where the previous one failed: with women and minors. Then other categories would be added, such as older men or people who need medical help or suffer from certain illnesses. He would be willing to pay the highest price for releases, both in number and profile, as Hamas demands. All accompanied, again, by a temporary ceasefire and the provision of further humanitarian aid. The head of the Mossad (Israel's intelligence services abroad), David Barnea, conveyed the proposal to the Prime Minister of Qatar, Mohamed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Warsaw on Monday; and the Director of the CIA, William Burns. Israel expects Washington to put strong pressure on Qatar so that the emirate transfers that pressure to Hamas, where several of its leaders reside.
The President of the United States, Joe Biden, sought to curb optimism and admitted that he does not expect an agreement to be reached soon. “We are putting pressure on,” he told reporters during a trip to the state of Wisconsin, reports Portal.
The main obstacle is fundamental. Hamas insists on a global and final agreement: all hostages in exchange for an end to hostilities. One of its leaders, Ghazi Hamad, repeated this on Wednesday, declaring that he “will not play the game” of agreeing to another release of hostages, which will be followed by “another round of mass killings.” The number of Palestinians killed this Wednesday reached the symbolic number of 20,000, of which about 8,000 are minors and 6,200 are women, according to the Hamas government's Health Ministry.
Funeral of victims of Israeli bombings in Palestine this Wednesday in Khan Yunis. Ahmad Hasaballah (Getty Images)
Netanyahu, prime minister at the head of a concentration government, has responded indirectly, with an eye on growing international pressure to end the election campaign or at least – like his important ally, the United States – to reduce its intensity and enter a phase more similar to that Fight against an underground guerrilla. “We will continue the war until the end,” Netanyahu warned in a statement. “It will continue like this until Hamas is eliminated: until victory.” Anyone who thinks we will stop has no connection to reality. Today we continue to attack Hamas with heavy fire. Also to his accomplices, near and far. All Hamas terrorists, from the first to the last, are dead men. They only have two options: surrender or die,” he added.
A continuation of the war would mean weeks or months for Gazans of meager meals a day, rationed water and diarrhea from drinking unsafe water. The United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, recalled this Wednesday that hundreds of thousands of displaced children in the south of the Gaza Strip only have access to 10% of the minimum water needed to hydrate and maintain hygiene. That means no more than two liters per day. He also highlighted the “critical” state of the region’s running water and sanitation systems.
There in the south lies the city of Rafah, which initially received all the displaced people from the north and later those from the harsh land, sea and air offensive against the city of Khan Yunis in the south. Sometimes they are the same. It has become the most densely populated area in the Gaza Strip, which even before the war was the place on the planet with the largest number of people (2.3 million) relative to its size. There are already more than 12,000 people living per square kilometer in Rafah, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Wednesday.
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