Yehuda Cohen says Israeli prime minister is refusing permanent ceasefire because ‘he wants to stay in power’
The father of an Israeli hostage has said Benjamin Netanyahu is “stalling” the deal with Hamas that could lead to the return of his son from Gaza.
Speaking at the Israeli embassy in central London, Yehuda Cohen, father of 20-year-old Israeli hostage Nimrod Cohen, said: “There is a deal on the table.
Continue reading...Israeli media reports Israeli American Trump donor will fly Eli Sharabi to Washington DC to meet president this week
The freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has been invited to Washington to meet Donald Trump this week, his brother told Israeli media on Sunday.
Sharabi, who was released from Gaza after 16 months in captivity, expects to meet Trump with other freed hostages on Tuesday, after the US president watched him describe the severe hunger and violence he endured on Israeli television.
Continue reading...Agencies say health situation is a ‘catastrophe’ and recent aid deliveries were a fraction of what is needed
Briefing the Israeli press after Benjamin Netanyahu’s order to turn off the aid supply to Gaza, government officials claimed that the Palestinian territory had several months’ worth of food stockpiled from earlier deliveries. However, the announcement led to an immediate jump in prices of basic necessities in Gaza, with residents saying they had doubled.
Aid agencies say the population of Gaza remains highly vulnerable and that the blockade of humanitarian supplies to a civilian population is unacceptable in any circumstances.
Continue reading...Netanyahu wants Hamas to allow for release of hostages without troop withdrawal, in plan Israel says came from US
Israel has cut off humanitarian supplies to Gaza in an effort to pressure Hamas into accepting a change in the ceasefire agreement to allow for the release of hostages without an Israeli troop withdrawal.
The office of the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, said on Sunday it was imposing a blockade on Gaza because Hamas would not accept a plan which it claimed had been put forward by the US special envoy, Steve Witkoff, to extend phase one of the ceasefire and continue to release hostages, and postpone phase two, which envisaged an Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Continue reading...Israel had agreed partial troop withdrawal by 9 March, but start of second phase of truce hits impasse
Talks aimed at maintaining the ceasefire in Gaza hit an impasse in Cairo on Saturday , over whether the truce should advance to a second phase.
A Hamas official said the multilateral negotiations in the Egyptian capital had made no progress on Friday, and there was no evidence the talks had resumed on Saturday, the last day of the ceasefire’s first six-week phase.
Continue reading...Negotiations on next part of truce have begun in Egypt, but militant group has accused Israel of procrastination
The latest round of talks on the second phase of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has yet to make any progress and it was unclear whether they would resume on Saturday, a senior Hamas official has said.
The ceasefire took effect on 19 January after more than 15 months of war following Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, the deadliest in the country’s history.
Continue reading...Plan for IDF-protected ‘humanitarian hubs’ to selectively issue aid casts doubt on Israeli intent to withdraw
The Israeli military has presented the UN and aid organisations with a plan for running Gaza that involves Israel having tighter control than it did before the war, according to humanitarian officials, casting doubt on whether Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has any intention of carrying out a military withdrawal.
At meetings with UN representatives on Wednesday and with officials from other agencies on Thursday, Cogat, the army unit given the task of delivering aid to the occupied territories, outlined a scheme of distributing supplies through tightly managed logistics hubs to vetted Palestinian recipients.
Continue reading...National outpouring of grief comes amid reports that deal reached to resume ceasefire with Hamas
Thousands of Israelis have lined the route of a funeral procession for two small children and their mother who were held hostage and died in captivity in Gaza.
The national outpouring of grief for Ariel, Kfir and Shiri Bibas came amid reports that a deal had been reached to resume the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, with the handover of more bodies of hostages in return for the release of Palestinians held in Israeli jails.
Continue reading...Israel ready to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, reports say
Israel is seeking to extend the first stage of the ceasefire agreement in the war with Hamas in Gaza and is prepared to resume fighting if there is no progress in crucial talks this week, according to reports.
Israel’s Kan Radio, along with Ma’ariv, a daily newspaper, reported on Tuesday that informal talks were under way aimed at extending the first 42-day stage of the ceasefire, which expires on Saturday. Official internationally mediated negotiations on how to implement the second stage – which would involve a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Palestinian territory – were supposed to begin weeks ago, but have been repeatedly postponed as the fragile truce has lurched from crisis to crisis.
Continue reading...US-based nonprofit Dawn also accuses ex-secretary of state Antony Blinken and ex-Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin
A US-based nonprofit organization has urged the international criminal court to investigate former president Joe Biden and two of his cabinet members for complicity in war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
The request, submitted by the Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn) last month but made public by the group on Monday, urges the ICC to investigate Biden, as well as former secretary of state Antony Blinken and former defense secretary Lloyd Austin, for their “accessorial roles in aiding and abetting, as well as intentionally contributing to, Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza”.
Continue reading...Israeli tanks in West Bank for first time in more than two decades amid tensions over ceasefire agreement with Hamas
Hamas official Basem Naim has been talking to Al Jazeera about the precocious Gaza ceasefire deal which looks increasingly like it will collapse. As a reminder, Benjamin Netanyahu has delayed the handover of 620 Palestinians indefinitely as he is demanding Hamas stop what he called its “cynical use of hostages for propaganda”.
Naim – a member of Hamas’s political bureau - said the Israeli prime minister is “intentionally sabotaging” the truce agreement. He told Al Jazeera:
Before going to the next step, we have to be sure that the past step, which was releasing 620 prisoners, are already released.
Because Netanyahu is clearly sending strong messages that he is intentionally sabotaging the deal; he is preparing the atmosphere for returning back to the war.
Continue reading...Eliya Cohen spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing Ziv Abud had died in Hamas attacks in 2023
An Israeli hostage only discovered his fiancee had survived the 7 October attacks after his release on Saturday, Israeli media has reported.
Eliya Cohen had spent more than 500 days in captivity fearing his bride-to-be, Ziv Abud, was dead. The last time they had seen each other, they were hiding in a shelter with relatives and friends after attending the Nova festival.
Continue reading...Ceasefire in jeopardy as Israel says it will wait ‘until release of next hostages is guaranteed’
Hamas released six Israeli hostages on Saturday, but Israel delayed the handover of more than 600 Palestinians it was due to free from its prisons in exchange, putting the five-week-old ceasefire agreement once more in jeopardy.
The government said the release would be delayed “until the release of the next hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies” at handovers of Israeli captives in Gaza.
The statement by Benjamin Netanyahu’s office came as vehicles apparently carrying prisoners left the open gates of Ofer prison, only to turn around and go back in.
The release of 620 Palestinian prisoners had been delayed for several hours and was meant to occur just after six Israeli hostages were released on Saturday.
Gaza ceasefire deal still on track amid uproar over fate of two Israeli boys and initial false return of their mother’s body
The body of the Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas has been identified, Israel’s army radio reported early on Saturday, adding that Bibas was likely killed in captivity with her children.
The confirmation came as Israelis and Palestinians braced for another tense exchange of hostages, prisoners and detainees on Saturday after uproar in Israel over allegations that two child hostages were “brutally murdered” by Hamas, and the group’s initial failure to deliver the body of their mother, instead returning the corpse of an unidentified woman.
Continue reading...Surgeons who worked in Gaza fear disease, malnutrition and eradication of healthcare will reverberate for decades
British doctors who worked in Gaza during the war have issued dire predictions over the long-term health of Palestinian civillians, warning that large numbers will continue to die.
The prevalence of infectious disease and multiple health problems linked to malnutrition, alongside the destruction of hospitals and killing of medical experts, meant mortality rates among Palestinians in Gaza would remain high after the cessation of Israeli shelling.
Continue reading...Show removed from iPlayer as ‘further due diligence’ carried out and critics ask if any Hamas members were paid for filming
A BBC documentary about Gaza has been pulled from its iPlayer service while the broadcaster deals with intensifying accusations that the film was biased because it failed to make clear the father of its child narrator was a Hamas deputy minister.
BBC sources indicated the intention was to make the documentary available to watch again once a “due diligence” exercise had taken place, but the decision reflects a frustration that the filmmakers did not inform the broadcaster of the situation before transmission.
Continue reading...Israel has demanded the return of Shiri Bibas after it said testing showed that one of the four bodies released by Hamas did not belong to any other hostage
The Israeli military has said the two Bibas boys were “murdered by terrorists” in Gaza.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said earlier that Ariel and Kfir Bibas had been identified after their bodies were released by Hamas on Thursday under the current ceasefire agreement.
According to the assessment of professional officials, based on the intelligence available to us and forensic findings from the identification process, Ariel and Kfir Bibas were brutally murdered by terrorists in captivity in November 2023.
Continue reading...Matthew Teller, whose books include Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, said the society’s response to the event which saw two leading booksellers detained was ‘an abject failure’
A writer has left the Society of Authors (SoA) in protest after the UK’s largest writers’ body made a statement on a recent Israeli police raid on a Palestinian-owned bookstore without mentioning Israel, Palestine or the names of the booksellers who were arrested.
Matthew Teller, the author of books including Nine Quarters of Jerusalem, said the SoA’s statement “added insult to the injury” and was a “betrayal”, leading to him cancelling his membership on Tuesday.
Continue reading...Remains of two young children, an elderly man and an unidentified fourth person arrive in Tel Aviv after ‘cruel’ handover in Gaza
The remains of two young children and an elderly man who were taken hostage by Hamas, as well as a fourth person who remains unidentified, have been handed over to Israel in what onlookers described as one of the “hardest days” for Israelis since the Palestinian militant group attack that ignited the war in Gaza.
A convoy carrying what was thought to be the bodies of Shiri Bibas, 32, her sons Ariel and Kfir, four years and nine months old respectively, and 85-year-old Oded Lifshitz, all from the Nir Oz kibbutz, arrived at a forensics centre in Tel Aviv yesterday for DNA checks and autopsy procedures.
Continue reading...Eli Sharabi learned his wife and daughters had been killed after his release from captivity in Gaza but is ‘mentally strong’, says British brother-in-law
“Don’t worry, I will be back. Whatever they do to me, I will be back,” was one of the last things Eli Sharabi told his wife and daughters before he was abducted by Hamas. And when the 52-year-old was freed after 16 months in captivity in Gaza, he was desperate to know if his family were waiting for him.
It was only then that he was told that his British wife, Lianne Sharabi, 48, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, had been murdered at their home in the Be’eri kibbutz in Israel on 7 October 2023.
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