The wait for the truce between Israelis and Palestinians grows, first with a stop to the fighting for 4 days starting from 7 am, followed in the afternoon by the exchange of Israeli hostages with Palestinian detainees: in both cases women and children. But Defense Minister Yoav Gallant warned, “another two months of war is expected.”
After 48 days of conflict, this seems to be the right time: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has announced that it has received the list of the first 13 kidnapped people who will be released and that it has already contacted their families. The prisoner exchange has been scheduled for 4pm local time, apparently through the Rafah crossing between Gaza and the Jewish state. It will be the first of those that will follow one another during the 4 days of ceasefire and which will lead, in a first phase, to the release of 50 Israeli hostages in exchange for 150 Palestinians. The final objective – with one or more additional days of respite – is that of 100 kidnapped people for 300 detainees: a ratio of 1 to 3. The Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent will be physically responsible for the exchange.
Once they have passed through the Egyptian Sinai and after an initial medical check-up, the 13 hostages should return to Israel from the Nitzana crossing and be entrusted to the soldiers. All the assistance measures developed by Israel will be implemented for them, from thorough health checks to psychological assistance. The soldiers who will take over the women and children have precise instructions on how to behave, especially with the little ones, who will obviously need to be reassured after long weeks of captivity. All the hostages – Qatar, which managed the negotiations together with the USA and Egypt, speaks of members of the same families – will therefore be entrusted, unless there are serious cases, to 5 specialized hospitals before returning to their families and to normality.
The Palestinian prisoners – among whom there are no convicted murderers, according to one of the conditions imposed by Israel – will instead be taken to their homes, largely between the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Among the 300 candidates eligible for release, there would be 33 women, 123 minors and 144 young people aged over 18. Among these, 49 are members of Hamas, 28 of Islamic Jihad, 60 of Palestinian President Abu Mazen’s Fatah movement and 17 of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Hamas committed itself during the truce to identifying Israeli hostages held by other Palestinian factions, starting with Islamic Jihad.
From today, around 300 trucks of humanitarian aid, including fuel, will enter the Strip from Rafah every day, but displaced people in the south will not be able to return to their homes in the north. For six hours then – according to the agreement – Israel will suspend the flight of reconnaissance drones over the Palestinian enclave but the soldiers have been ordered to respond immediately to any violation of the truce. Evoking another two months of war at the end of the truce, Gallant explained that “the pressure” will serve “to bring back more hostages”. As well as to eradicate Hamas from all of Gaza, an objective indicated by Netanyahu from the beginning.
Yesterday the fighting continued without stopping. Israel continued to strike militants in the north of the Strip, especially in Jabalya and Beit Hanun, two Hamas strongholds. Local medical sources reported the death of at least “27 people in an Israeli attack on a UN school hosting displaced persons” in Jabalya, as well as 93 injured. The deaths in Gaza – according to estimates by the Hamas ministry which does not distinguish between militiamen and civilians – have reached almost 15,000, of which 6,150 minors and 4,000 women. The injured are around 35 thousand.
To know more
– Israel, the day of the hostages
– Israel, relatives of the hostages: “Life and death linked to a list, it is psychological terror”
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Lebanon: Hezbollah missile launch sites hit
Israel’s army says it attacked Hezbollah sites in southern Lebanon in the last few hours. According to a statement from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) cited by local media, the attack specifically targeted a launch site used to fire missiles against the Jewish state. The Shiite movement claimed responsibility for at least six attacks carried out yesterday along the dividing line between Lebanon and Israel and in the territorial depths of the Upper Galilee.
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