New hostages held by Hamas are set to be released on Tuesday in exchange for prisoners held by Israel, after a two-day ceasefire extension provided further breathing space for residents of the devastated Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.
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According to a source close to the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, ten Israeli hostages and 30 Palestinian prisoners must be released. The extension of the ceasefire until 0500 GMT Thursday is expected to allow the release of a total of 20 hostages and 60 other prisoners, according to the Qatari mediator.
But in a sign of the precarious situation, an AFP journalist in Gaza City saw the Israeli army fire three tank shells at dozens of civilians trying to return to the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood, causing at least one death.
The army claimed “suspects approached Israeli troops” and a tank fired “warning shots,” while Palestinian movements denounced “violations of the ceasefire” by Israel.
The extension of the ceasefire, which came into effect on November 24th, also allows new aid trucks to enter the Gaza Strip, which has been besieged and bombed for seven weeks by the Israeli army in retaliation for a bloody attack on Israel on October 7th by Hamas -Commandos from the neighboring Gaza Strip.
Authorities said the attack, unprecedented in Israel’s history, killed 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians.
In retaliation, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, designated a terrorist organization by the United States, the European Union and Israel, by relentlessly bombing Palestinian territory and launching a ground offensive on October 27.
According to the Hamas government, 14,854 people were killed in Israeli attacks, including 6,150 under the age of 18.
An “incomplete” joy
The ceasefire agreement, negotiated under the auspices of Qatar and with support from Egypt and the United States, has so far enabled the release of 50 Israeli hostages and 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.
Nineteen foreign hostages, the majority of whom were Thais living in Israel, were released outside the scope of this agreement.
On the fifth day of the ceasefire, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains under intense pressure from public opinion, traumatized by the Hamas attack and demanding the return of the hostages.
“We will release all hostages,” he said on Tuesday. “We will destroy this terrorist organization (Hamas) and ensure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to the State of Israel,” he reiterated.
The army estimates that around 240 people were kidnapped and taken to Gaza, where Hamas seized power in 2007.
Eleven of them were released before dawn and taken back to Israel by helicopter. Among the ex-hostages are three teenagers with dual French nationality, Erez and Sahar Calderon, 12 and 16 years old, and Eitan Yahalomi, 12 years old, who were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz near Gaza.
Images released by the army showed Eitan, whose father Ohad was also kidnapped, being held by his mother.
The Calderon family’s lawyers expressed their “great joy” but “incomplete” joy that Erez and Sahar’s father Ofer also remained in the hands of Hamas.
Shortly thereafter, Israel released 33 Palestinians.
“I can’t describe what I feel. “It’s an indescribable joy,” said one of them, Mohamed Abou al-Humus, as he returned home to Israeli-occupied and annexed East Jerusalem, where he hugged his mother, according to an AFP team on the ground.
But in Beitunia in the occupied West Bank, the celebrations were cut short: According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, a young Palestinian was shot dead in clashes with Israeli forces.
On Tuesday, the same ministry announced the deaths of two more Palestinians killed by Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967.
Blinking back in Israel
Shortly before the ceasefire renewal, Mr. Netanyahu’s office agreed to add “50 prisoners,” including Ahed Tamimi, a young icon of the Palestinian cause who was arrested in early November, to the list of Palestinians expected to be released.
Negotiators are working behind the scenes to extend the ceasefire beyond Thursday, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected back in Israel and the West Bank this week.
The heads of the American and Israeli secret services are in Doha.
The Israeli government, which approved an additional “war budget” of 30.3 billion shekels (7.5 billion euros), reiterated in recent days its intention to resume fighting after the end of the ceasefire.
“It’s all gone”
According to the United Nations, more than half of Gaza’s homes were damaged or destroyed during the war.
The overpopulated area, which has been under an Israeli land, sea and air blockade since 2007, was completely besieged by Israel on October 9th and has since suffered from severe shortages of water, food, fuel, medicine and electricity.
Despite the arrival of hundreds of trucks since November 24 in the small area where 1.7 of the 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war, the situation remains “catastrophic”, said the director of the World Food Program (PAM) for the Middle East Osten, Corinne Fleischer, estimates that “there is a risk of famine” in Gaza.
The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified a “massive increase” in certain infectious diseases.
Thousands of Palestinians displaced in southern Gaza took advantage of the ceasefire to return to their homes in the north, the most devastated region, ignoring the Israeli army’s ban on taking control of several sectors.
“I’m trying to find memories of my house,” says a Palestinian from al-Zahra, pointing to the piles of rubble on which his house stood, destroyed by Israeli attacks.
“Al-Zahra was the most beautiful city in the world (…) and now it is gone,” said Zein Ashour, a young woman who also lived in this now-destroyed neighborhood.
Taghrid al-Najjar, a 46-year-old mother, found refuge with her family in a school in the southern Gaza Strip before returning home to the village of Abassane in the same area to find her house destroyed.
“Twenty-seven years of construction and everything is gone!”