Israel at war: Fresh hope for hostages with new ceasefire plan

Fresh hope for hostages with new ceasefire plan

by Anne Barrowclough

The head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad is briefing the country’s war cabinet on a new development in hostage negotiations which Israeli media reports are different from previous initiatives.

Mossad chief David Barnea and Israel Defence Forces hostage negotiator Nitzan Alon are relaying to the cabinet an updated Qatari proposal for the release of hostages, Israel’s Channel 12 reports.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told representatives of the hostages’ families: “We are holding talks right now. I cannot elaborate on the status (of the negotiations), we are working to bring them all home. That is our goal.”

The cabinet meets as a Hamas delegation is due in Cairo on Friday local time to give its “observations” about an Egyptian plan for a ceasefire that would end the war in Gaza, a Hamas official said.

The plan was last week put to officials of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which is also battling Israeli forces in the territory, when the chiefs of both movements visited the Egyptian capital.

Sources close to Hamas say Cairo’s three-stage plan provides for renewable ceasefires, a staggered release of hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israel, and ultimately a ceasefire to end the war sparked by the deadly October 7 attack on Israel.

It also provides for a Palestinian government of technocrats after talks involving “all Palestinian factions”, which would be responsible for governing and rebuilding in post-war Gaza.

– with AFP

Air strikes, urban combat rock Khan Yunis

by Agency Writers

Israeli forces battled Hamas in Gaza where air strikes and urban combat rocked the southern city of Khan Yunis, near where many hundreds of thousands of displaced Palestinians have sought refuge.

UN World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for “urgent steps to alleviate the grave peril” facing besieged Gaza’s people, including “terrible injuries, acute hunger and … severe risk of disease”.

In Jerusalem, families of hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza again rallied for their release, and a kibbutz announced that a 70-year-old US-Israeli thought to be the oldest woman held captive had died in the October 7 attacks.

US President Joe Biden said he was “devastated” by the news Judith Weinstein Haggai was dead, and pledged that Washington will “not stop working” with its ally Israel to bring the remaining hostages home.

The war, which started with Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, has left much of northern Gaza in ruins while the battlefront has shifted ever further to the south of the besieged territory.

The Israeli army said it had deployed an additional brigade to Khan Yunis, hometown of Hamas’s Gaza leader Yahya Sinwar, where AFP correspondents reported sustained air and artillery strikes on Thursday (Friday AEDT).

The Palestinian Red Crescent society reported that shelling had killed at least 10 people near the city’s Al-Amal hospital, an area where it said about 14,000 people are sheltering.

Later Thursday, Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry said 20 people were killed, most of them women and children, and dozens wounded in shelling of the Shaboura camp in the southern city of Rafah.

At least 21,320 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in Gaza, according to Hamas-run Gaza’s health ministry. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the ministry, on Thursday reported an additional 200 deaths, “including entire families”, over the past 24 hours in strikes.

The Israeli army says 167 of its soldiers have been killed inside Gaza in its fight against Hamas which Israel, the United States and European Union consider a “terrorist” group. In total, the army said, more than 500 soldiers had been killed since October 7, including in the Hamas attack and the battle to retake control of southern Israel, inside Gaza, and in cross-border hostilities with Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

– AFP

Israel troops ignored pleas before hostage killings

by Agency Writers

Israeli soldiers ignored cries for “help” when they stormed a Gaza building holding three hostages just days before killing them by mistake, said a military investigation published on Thursday.

The soldiers also heard “hostages” shouted in Hebrew on December 10, but interpreted that as a “terrorist deception attempt” by Hamas militants to lure them into the building in the Gaza City district of Shejaiya, the probe said.

Believing the building was rigged with explosives, the soldiers exited and killed five Hamas militants trying to escape, it added.

The hostages then probably fled the building also, and on December 15 Israeli soldiers shot them after mistakenly identifying them as a threat, the investigation said.

Two were killed instantly. The third hostage fled and soldiers were ordered to hold fire in order to identify him, the probe said.

Hearing cries of “help!” and “they’re shooting at me”, Israeli commanders asked the surviving hostage to advance towards the soldiers.

But two soldiers “who did not hear the order” because of “noise” from a nearby tank shot him dead.

The three hostages were all shirtless and one had been carrying a white flag. On December 14, an army drone had identified signs of “SOS” and “help, three hostages” on a building close to where the three hostages were shot.

The army “failed in its mission to rescue the hostages in this event,” army chief Herzi Halevi said in a statement published along with the report of the investigation. The three fatalities “could have been prevented”, he added.

Soon after the killings of the hostages were announced, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said it “broke my heart” and “broke the whole nation’s heart”.

Israel has been mourning the deaths of the hostages identified as Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz and Samer El-Talalqa.

The killings of the three men, all in their twenties, have sparked protests in Tel Aviv, where demonstrators demanded that the authorities come up with a new plan to bring home the remaining 129 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip.

– AFP

Israel strikes near Syria’s capital: state media

by Agency Writers

Syrian state media has reported Israeli attacks near the capital Damascus.

“Our air defence are intercepting hostile targets in the vicinity of Damascus,” official news agency SANA said on on Thursday (Friday AEDT).

“An Israeli attack targeted the vicinity of the capital Damascus,” state television said.

Israel rarely comments on individual strikes targeting Syria, but it has repeatedly said it will not allow arch-foe Iran, which backs President Bashar al-Assad’s government, to expand its presence there.

Israel has launched hundreds of air strikes on its northern neighbour since Syria’s civil war began in 2011, primarily targeting Iran-backed forces including Lebanese Hezbollah fighters as well as Syrian army positions.

But it has intensified attacks since the war between Israel and Hamas began on October 7, as tensions rise across the Middle East.

Damascus international airport has been out of service since Israeli strikes targeted it in late November, just hours after flights resumed following similar attacks the previous month.

– AFP

US-Israeli woman hostage confirmed dead, body in Gaza

by Agency Writers

A US-Israeli woman seized in the October 7 Hamas attack was killed on the same day and her body remains in the Gaza Strip, her kibbutz community said.

Judith Weinstein Haggai, 70, had been thought to be the oldest woman among the hostages still held in Gaza by the Palestinian militant group.

Her kibbutz of Nir Oz said Haggai was “murdered in the massacre”, and her body remains in the war-torn Palestinian territory.

The announcement on Thursday (Friday AEDT) by the community follows confirmation on December 23 that her husband, Gad Haggai, was also killed on October 7.

“The bodies of both are still in the custody of Hamas,” the community said, without elaborating.

The couple were among some 250 people taken hostage from Israeli border communities and military posts.

More than 100 of those abducted have since been freed, many exchanged for Palestinian prisoners.

Israel says 129 captives are still missing in Gaza, including 23 believed to have been killed.

Three hostages were mistakenly shot dead by soldiers in the Gaza Strip, according to the Israeli army.

“There are no words to describe the pain of losing our parents and grandparents to the massacre that took place on our kibbutz,” the family of Haggai said in a statement.

“We pray that their bodies … will be soon returned to us, and that their murders are a reminder for leaders everywhere to bring the hostages home now before it is too late.”

In Washington, President Joe Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were “devastated” by the news.

The slain couple’s family has been “living through hell for weeks,” he said, pledging that the United States will “not stop working to bring” remaining hostages home.

Ahl Haggai, the couple’s son, has said that in a final phone call on October 7, his mother had told a paramedic that she and her husband had both been wounded.

“The only evidence we have … is a video of my dad on the back of a truck, laying down injured,” he told AFP earlier this month.

“She’s nowhere to be found,” he said, with only his mother’s glasses recovered from the kibbutz.

– AFP

Iran condemned for tripling uranium enrichment

by Agency Writers

Western powers condemned Iran accelerating its production of highly enriched uranium, after a watchdog said it had upped manufacture following months of slowdown.

In a joint statement released on Thursday, Britain, France, Germany and the US said they “condemn this measure that further aggravates the continued escalation of the Iranian nuclear program,” adding that “Iran’s production of highly enriched uranium has no credible civilian justification”.

The statement came two days after the International Atomic Energy Agency released a report saying Iran “increased its production of highly enriched uranium, reversing a previous output reduction from mid-2023.”

Iran had increased its output of 60 per cent enriched uranium to a rate of about 9kg a month since the end of November, the UN watchdog said.

That is up from about 3kg a month since June, and a return to the nine kilograms a month it was producing during the first half of 2023.

In their statement on Thursday, the Western powers said that “these developments constitute a step in a bad direction on the part of Iran”, warning of “significant proliferation risks”.

“These decisions show the absence of will on the part of Iran to engage in a de-escalation in good faith and result in irresponsible behaviour in the context of regional tensions,” the statement said.

Responding to the IAEA report, Iran’s top nuclear official Mohammad Eslami said: “We have done nothing new and our activity is according to the regulations”.

– AFP

Hezbollah accuses Israel of hacking Lebanon CCTV

by Agency Writers

Lebanon’s Hezbollah accused Israel of hacking into CCTV cameras installed outside homes and shops in southern Lebanon and urged residents there to take the device offline.

The powerful Iran-backed armed group accused Israel of using the footage to target its fighters and urged Lebanese citizens to “disconnect the private cameras… from the Internet”.

The Israel-Lebanon border has been rocked by escalating exchanges of fire, mainly between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, since the Israel-Hamas war broke out on October 7, raising fears of a broader conflict.

Hezbollah said Israel had hacked the camera systems to gain visibility after the group’s cross-border attacks had “targeted most of the cameras” Israel had installed near the border.

“The enemy has recently hacked into civilian cameras connected to the internet and installed in front of homes, shops and institutions in frontline villages,” a Hezbollah statement said.

– AFP

Israel vows to repel Hezbollah terrorists

by Rachel Baxendale

Senior Israeli ministers have ­declared they will drive Hezbollah from the Jewish state’s northern border, ­saying the terror group’s chief could be their next target, following an air strike that killed two Australian citizens, one of whom the Iranian-backed terror organisation claimed as its own.

Experts say the chances of an escalation in the war between Israel and Hezbollah are dramatically increasing, following the intensification of fighting in recent days.

Benny Gantz – a member of ­Israel’s war cabinet who is considered one of the most likely ­candidates to succeed an under-pressure Benjamin Netanyahu – on Thursday (AEDT) threatened military action along the Lebanese border.

“I say to our friends around the world: the situation in the northern border necessitates change,” the former Israeli Defence Forces general said.

“The time for a diplomatic solution is running out. If the world and the government of Lebanon don’t act to stop the fire toward northern communities and to push Hezbollah away from the border, the IDF will do that.”