The War Cabinet Israel announced early this Thursday that it will resume negotiations with Hamas for the return of the hostages who have been held hostage in Gaza since October 7.
The Cabinet assured in a statement having ordered the negotiating team to resume its work, which stopped once again on May 10, after an attempted agreement in Cairo that Israel rejected.
The decision comes after this Wednesday Egypt threatened to withdraw as a mediator in the conflict between Israel and Hamas due to accusations of having carried out poor management of the last round of negotiations, which led to its failure, according to the newspaper. The Times of Israel.
The Cabinet thus opens the door to a new round of negotiations, which have been paralyzed since May 10, when both Israel and Hamas withdrew their delegations from Cairo after failing to reach an agreement on the proposal for a ceasefire and exchange of hostages for prisoners presented by the Islamist organization and the mediators.
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So, Hamas accused Israel of returning negotiations “to the starting point,” while Israeli officials noted that the Islamists had modified essential issues in the proposed agreement once they had accepted it.
Of the 253 kidnapped on October 7, 124 captives remain in the enclave, 40 of them dead according to Israel – more than 70 according to Hamas –; while there have been four other hostages for years, two of them dead.
Additionally, four hostages were released by Hamas in October; three rescued by the Army -two of them a few weeks ago in an operation in Rafah-; while the bodies of 17 hostages have been recovered, three of whom Israeli troops killed by mistake.
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The decision to resume negotiations was also made after this Wednesday A video was released of five Israeli female soldiers being kidnapped on October 7, day of the attack by the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas in Israel that sparked the war.
The families of the five soldiers authorized the dissemination of the images, in which they are seen sitting on the ground, with their hands tied behind their backs, some with bloody faces.
“These images show the violent, humiliating and traumatizing treatment that these women suffered on the day of their kidnapping,” the Hostage Families Forum said in a statement. In response to the video, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reiterated that will continue to fight Hamas to “ensure that what we saw tonight does not happen again.”
Gaza will resume “in the next few hours” in Cairo.
“Egypt received a communication in which the Israeli side requests the resumption of negotiations on a truce in Gaza and the exchange of hostages” for the Palestinian prisoners, said the sources, who asked not to be identified.
They highlighted that the indirect dialogue, mediated by Egypt, Qatar and the United States, “will be resumed” from the point you were at when you became paralyzed and “shall not begin from the beginning.”
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They clarified that this means “sitting at the table to address the latest truce proposal that was approved by Israel, and then by Hamas, before the Israeli side suddenly backtracked and withdrew its approval.”
The Egyptian sources pointed out that Cairo will continue its mediation “with the same Egyptian negotiating team without changing any of its members,” and that “will address with the Israeli side the points criticized (by the Israeli delegation) to try to reach a satisfactory solution for both parties.” The objective is to “reach a truce as soon as possible,” they added.
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At night shelling and artillery fire were heard throughout Gaza. The Gaza civil defense said 26 people, including 15 children, were killed in Gaza City, in the north of the Palestinian territory, in two Israeli airstrikes before dawn.
Hostilities also continue in southern Gaza, specifically in Rafah, according to witnesses, where Israeli troops entered on May 7 with the intention of carrying out a major offensive. Some 800,000 Palestinians were forced to flee Rafah for other parts of Gaza, according to the UN.
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