The Israel Prison Service has said it released 30 Palestinians from Israeli jails late on Tuesday in a fifth swap under a truce deal with Gaza’s Hamas militants.
In a statement, the prison service said the 30 Palestinians were released from Ofer Prison, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and from a detention centre in Jerusalem.
Qatar earlier said 15 women and 15 children would be released.
Mediators are meeting in Qatar, meanwhile, to try to secure an extension of the five-day truce between Israel and Hamas that is set to expire on Wednesday.
We are now closing this liveblog, but our coverage of the Israel-Hamas war continues here.
It’s just past 6am in Gaza City and Tel Aviv. Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
Hamas and Israel are expected to release more hostages and prisoners on Wednesday, the last day of the prolonged six-day truce. Israeli media have reported that Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has received a list with the names of the Israeli hostages that Hamas intends to release.
Egyptian media, quoting government sources, have reported that a preliminary understanding has been reached to extend the truce for two more days, under the same conditions that are currently being observed. Israel has said the truce could be extended further, provided Hamas continues to free at least 10 Israeli hostages a day.
US and Israeli spy chiefs have flown to Qatar for talks on how to extend the current truce in Gaza in exchange for the release of more hostages by Hamas. The discussions of the CIA director, William Burns, and the head of the Mossad, David Barnea, with the Qatari leadership are expected to focus on persuading Hamas to begin releasing the men among the remaining hostages.
Negotiations over a possible second extension of the pause in fighting in Gaza and the release of hostages being held by Hamas now include men and soldiers, according to a report. Israel would not agree to any discussion on a new hostage deal before the current one is fully implemented and all women and children who are held hostage are released, the report said.
The latest exchange of hostages in Gaza for Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails took place on Tuesday night. 12 hostages, including 10 Israelis and two Thai nationals, are now in Israel. The 30 Palestinians to be released from Israeli prisons on Tuesday include 15 children and 15 women. In a statement, the Israel Prison Service said the 30 Palestinians were released from Ofer prison, near Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, and from a detention centre in Jerusalem.
There were reports that the West Bank city of Jenin had been raided by Israeli troops. Al Jazeera says that armed clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters have taken place, with at least eight people injured. Christos Christou, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, said that the Israeli army “conducted an incursion on Jenin refugee camp.”
There were reports of some fighting in Gaza, depite the extension of the truce. Israel said a number of soldiers were lightly injured in Gaza after “three explosive devices were detonated adjacent to IDF troops in two different locations”. In a Telegram message on Tuesday, the IDF said: “In one of the locations, terrorists also opened fire at the troops, who responded with fire.” Hamas accused Israel of a “blatant breach of the ceasefire” in the northern Gaza Strip but said it was “still committed to the ceasefire so long as the enemy is committed to it”.
The UN’s aid chief, Martin Griffiths, will travel to Jordan on Wednesday for talks on the possibility of opening a second crossing, the Kerem Shalom crossing, to allow for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza from Israel. Since the temporary truce between Hamas and Israel came into force last week, about 200 trucks carrying aid have entered Gaza on a daily basis, but the amount is nowhere enough to need the needs of its population.
The Palestinian Red Crescent (PRCS) has said Israeli forces are preventing a fuel truck from entering the north of Gaza. The truck, which was passing through a checkpoint which separates the north of the strip from the south, was carrying fuel to support the work of seven PRCS ambulances operational in northern Gaza, it said on Tuesday. In a later post, it said Israeli forces prevented its emergency medical team from transferring a wounded patient to the hospital in Jenin in the occupied West Bank.
The population of Gaza, especially women and children, are at “high risk of famine” if humanitarian food supplies do not continue past the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, the UN World Food Programme (WFP) has warned. In an update on Tuesday, the WFP said it had delivered food to 121,161 people in Gaza since the truce began on Friday. “Six days is simply not enough to provide all the assistance needed,” it said.
There is a risk that more people could die from diseases than from bombings in Gaza if the territory’s health system is not put back on its feet quickly, a World Health Organization (WHO) spokesperson said on Tuesday. “Eventually we will see more people dying from disease than from bombardment if we are not able to put back together this health system,” the WHO’s Margaret Harris said.
Philippine president Ferdinand Marocs has said he is “very happy” to announce that Noralyn Babadilla is now safely back in Israel, adding that “all Filipinos affected by the war have been accounted for”.
Noralyn, who was released on Tuesday, was the second Filipino to be released by Hamas. Filipino caregiver Gelienor “Jimmy” Pacheco was among the group of hostages released on the first day of the temporary truce.
Marcos said in a statement: “We extend our sincerest gratitude to Israeli authorities for facilitating Noralyn’s release, and for all ongoing assistance to Filipinos in Israel. Our gratitude also goes to Egypt and the State of Qatar for their crucial role in this process over the past several weeks.”
About 30,000 Filipinos work in Israel, mainly in the care sector. Most live away from the conflict areas.
There are reports that parts of the city of Jenin, in the West Bank, have been closed off with checkpoints set up at routes into the city.
Al Jazeera says that armed clashes between Israeli troops and Palestinian fighters have taken place, with at least eight people injured. They report that hundreds of Israeli troops have taken part in the raid, supported by more than 50 armoured vehicles.
The Palestinian Red Crescent has said that one of its medical teams was detained by Israeli troops outside a Jenin hospital, preventing them from transferring a patient with a gunshot wound in the leg to the hospital. They later said that the patient was arrested.
Christos Christou, the international president of Médecins Sans Frontières, is in Jenin and says that the Israeli army “conducted an incursion on Jenin refugee camp.”
In a video posted to X, he says that he has been trapped in the Khalil Suleiman hospital for more than two hours, while Israeli forces “operated in Jenin camp”.
Israeli media are reporting that Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has received a list with the names of the Israeli hostages that Hamas intends to release on Wednesday, the sixth group of hostages to be freed as part of the temporary truce.
The families of those on the list have reportedly been informed.
The chances of the truce being extended much beyond 10 days appear slim, analysts say.
One reason is that both sides are running out of hostages or prisoners whom they can free relatively painlessly. The Palestinians released from Israeli jails so far are mainly women and children. So, too, are the hostages freed by Hamas in Gaza. In the brutal calculations of such things, neither category includes “high value” individuals. Among the hostages, these would include military personnel. Among the prisoners, it may mean high-profile political leaders, those accused of very serious crimes and others thought to endanger Israel’s security.
One possibility is that the current ceasefire could be extended to include elderly and sick people among the remaining 180 or so hostages and the thousands of Palestinians in Israeli jails. But that would postpone, not prevent, the coming trial of strength.
Nour Odeh, an analyst and commentator based in Ramallah, said that phase 2 would not be a continuation of phase 1. “[This] is when we get into the hardball. The civilian hostages is one thing, but the soldiers is another. Hamas have said all along they want ‘all for all’ [all the hostages for all the prisoners in Israel] but I don’t think [Benjamin] Netanyahu will accept such a high price.”
She added: “The likelihood of a resumption of bombardment and also a ground offensive in the south [of Gaza] continues to loom large.”
To reconcile the apparently conflicting goals of freeing the hostages and “crushing” Hamas, Israeli officials and many analysts say military pressure is the only way to force the organisation to make concessions – despite the cost in civilian life and harm to Israel’s international reputation.
Egypt’s Al-Araby Al-Jadeed newspaper is reporting that a preliminary understanding has been reached to extend the truce for two more days, under the same conditions that are currently being observed. The paper has quoted Egyptian officials as its source.
Israeli officials confirmed to the Haaretz newspaper that the proposal was being examined, but has not yet been confirmed. Haaretz reports an Israeli source as saying the agreement on an extension depended on whether Hamas is able to release 10 additional Israeli hostages a day.
As we reported earlier, with fewer women and children remaining in captivity extending the truce may require Hamas to free at least some Israeli men for the first time.
The AFP news agency has reported on the testimony of some of the recently freed Israeli hostages, who have detailed the conditions of their confinement.
None of the hostages released under the truce have so far given any direct accounts of the conditions in which they were held and hospitals say they have been instructed to refrain from disclosing details.
However some details are slowly surfacing from medical professionals treating them, while relatives are offering more dramatic accounts of mistreatment and hardship.
Esther Yaeli, grandmother of 12-year-old French-Israeli boy Eitan Yahalomi, who was released on Monday, told the Walla news website he was held in solitary confinement for 16 days.
“The days that he was alone were horrible,” she said. “Now Eitan appears very withdrawn.”
His aunt, Deborah Cohen, said that Eitan suffered “horrors” at the hands of Hamas and described them as “monsters”.
She told France’s BFM TV: “Hamas forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them.
Hagar Mizrahi, the head of the Israeli health ministry’s operations for returning hostages, told AFP that they had been held in “horrible conditions” and that “the medical consequences are pretty clear”.
“Some of the things that I’ve heard in recent days are heart-wrenching,” she added, offering no specifics. “They’re simply outrageous in every way.”
Ruti Munder, 78, said she was kept in a “suffocating” room and slept on plastic chairs with a sheet for nearly 50 days.
In one of the first interviews with a freed hostage, Munder told Israel’s Channel 13 television that initially they ate “chicken with rice, all sorts of canned food and cheese”.
They were given tea in the morning and evening, and the children were given sweets, but the food changed when “the economic situation was not good, and people were hungry”, she said.
Here’s where the temporary pause in fighting stands as Wednesday begins in the Middle East. Hamas and Israel are expected to release more hostages and prisoners today, the last day of the prolonged six-day truce.
Israel has said the truce could be extended further, provided Hamas continues to free at least 10 Israeli hostages a day. But with fewer women and children remaining in captivity, that may require Hamas freeing at least some Israeli men for the first time.
Attention now turns to Qatar which mediated indirect talks between Hamas and Israel that resulted in the ceasefire.
On Tuesday, Qatar hosted spy chiefs from Israel’s Mossad and the United States’ CIA. The meeting sought to “build on the progress of the extended humanitarian pause agreement and to initiate further discussions about the next phase of a potential deal”, a source briefed on the visits told Reuters.
The truce has brought Gaza its first respite after seven weeks of fighting and bombardment that has reduced much of the region to rubble. The temporary ceasefire has allowed about 800 aid trucks to enter Gaza and the first of three US planes with humanitarian supplies for Gaza landed in Egypt on Tuesday.
The Biden administration has told Israel that it must work to avoid “significant further displacement” of Palestinian civilians in southern Gaza if it renews its ground campaign after the current pause in fighting, the AP news agency reported senior US officials as saying on Tuesday.
Separately, White House national security council spokesperson John Kirby said the Israelis had been receptive when US officials have raised the issue.
The White House, seeking to avoid more large-scale civilian casualties or mass displacement like that seen before the current temporary pause in the fighting, underscored to the Israelis that they must operate with far greater precision in southern Gaza than they did in the north, said officials who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity, according to AP.
The White House has begun to put greater pressure on Israel that the manner of the coming campaign must be “carefully thought through,” AP reports.
Kirby, told reporters separately, “Now you have an added population of hundreds of thousands more in the south that you didn’t have before [the Israelis] moved into Gaza City.”
“And so it’s even all that more of an added burden on Israel to make sure … that they have properly accounted for … the extra innocent life that is now in south Gaza.”
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made clear that Israeli Defense Forces will eventually restart military operations after the conclusion of the current, temporary ceasefire.
President Joe Biden has said he would like to see the pause – which has also allowed a surge of much-needed humanitarian aid to get into Gaza – continue as long as feasible.
Thai foreign minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara has said he welcomes the release of two more Thai hostages that had been held by Hamas in Gaza.
“Happy to personally welcome 2 additional Thai hostages just released and arrived at the hospital in Tel Aviv,” he posted on the social media platform X.
Nineteen Thai hostages have so far been released, while the foreign ministry says 13 more remain in captivity. There were 39 Thai nationals killed in the 7 October attack by Hamas.
Here’s more of what we know about the 10 Israeli hostages released by Hamas on Tuesday.
Ofelia Roitman, 77
On 7 October, Roitman’s family lost contact with her shortly before 10am, while she was in her safe room. That evening, when soldiers inspected her house, they found no sign of a struggle, suggesting that the Argentinian national had been abducted.
Her husband, hospitalised after a fall, was absent at the time of the attack.
Ada Sagi, 74
Sagi, who has lived alone in Nir Oz since her husband died of cancer, was abducted from her safe room.
Her son Noam Sagi, who lives in London, had no news of his mother until he saw a video online of a stranger in his mother’s garden. Ada, who suffers from asthma, had been due to visit him to celebrate her 75th birthday.
Noralin Agojo, 60
Philippines-born Agojo was abducted from Nirim, where she was visiting friends on 7 October along with her partner Gideon Babani, who was killed in the attack. Before her capture, Agojo called her brother Exo and told him he might not see her again.
Meirav Tal, 53
Tal was freed after the release of her partner’s two children, Yagil and Or Yaakov, on Monday.
Tal and the children’s father, Yair Yaakov, who remains in Gaza, were abducted when militants stormed their home in Nir Oz as they were hiding in a safe room. The children, who were staying with their mother, were taken into Gaza separately.
Rimon Kirsht, 36
Abducted from her home in Nirim, Kirsht was taken along with her partner, Yagev Buchstab, 34, who has not been released.
Kirsht sent her mother a voice message at about 8:30am on 7 October, a relative told the media. The message ended with the sounds of militants shouting and firing shots.
Hours later, when Israeli security forces asked residents of the community to gather, Kirsht and Buchstab were missing and their house was empty.
We’re getting more information on the Israeli hostages freed by Hamas on Tuesday. Ten Israeli women including a 17-year-old were released, Israeli officials said, as well as two Thai nationals. Their release was followed by the freeing of 30 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Here’s what we know about some of the hostages released on Tuesday.
Mia Leimberg, 17, her mother, Gabriela, 59, and aunt Clara Marman, 63
Mia, the youngest hostage released on Tuesday, her mother and aunt were all abducted from Nir Yitzhak kibbutz. Originally from Jerusalem, the Leimbergs were visiting Marman, Gabriela’s sister, when Nir Yitzhak was attacked on 7 October.
Marman’s partner, Luis Har, and brother, Fernando Marman, were also taken hostage and remain in Gaza.
Ditza Heiman, 84
The video of Heiman’s abduction in a car, alongside the testimony of a neighbour, was the only proof of life her family had until now. Living alone in Nir Oz kibbutz, the widow and former social worker had taken refuge in her safe room.
When friends attempted to reach the great-grandmother on the day of the attack, her phone rang for hours, until someone speaking in Arabic answered at around 4pm.
Tamar Metzger, 78
Metzger, a mother-of-three, and her husband, Yoram, 80, were abducted from their home in Nir Oz. She was released without her husband.
The US senate will begin consideration of legislation including aid for Israel and Ukraine as soon as next week, majority leader Chuck Schumer said on Tuesday.
“I’m going to put them on the floor next week, hopefully with bipartisan support, because that’s the only way you can get it done,” Schumer told a weekly news conference.
Biden asked Congress last month to approve $106bn in national security funding, including aid for Ukraine as it battles a Russian invasion, support for Israel after the 7 October attack and money for additional security at the U.S. border with Mexico.
But the funding has not been approved, raising concerns that funds for Ukraine in particular might never pass, particularly after the Republican-led House passed a bill including assistance for Israel, but not Ukraine.
Biden’s request to Congress included $60bn for Ukraine as well as about $14bn each for Israel and security at the border with Mexico.
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMihwFodHRwczovL3d3dy50aGVndWFyZGlhbi5jb20vd29ybGQvbGl2ZS8yMDIzL25vdi8yOC9pc3JhZWwtaGFtYXMtd2FyLWxpdmUtdXBkYXRlcy1ob3N0YWdlcy1wYWxlc3RpbmlhbnMtcmVsZWFzZWQtZ2F6YS1jZWFzZWZpcmUtZXh0ZW5kZWTSAQA?oc=5
2023-11-29 01:18:00Z
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