Hostage relatives step up campaign for further releases

Relatives of Israeli hostages held in Gaza have stepped up their campaign for a new release deal and have erected tents at a protest site in Tel Aviv.

The move came after Friday’s incident in which Israeli troops shot and killed three hostages who had escaped their Hamas guards in Gaza City after 70 days in captivity. The three hostages had come into plain view of the soldiers while waving a white cloth and with their torsos bared to show that they were unarmed and were not wearing bomb belts. An IDF sniper nevertheless shot and killed two of the hostages. The third hostage fled to a nearby building and called out in Hebrew to the Israeli troops who had gathered outside. Yet upon emerging from the building he was shot dead as well.

The three had also hung a banner from a nearby building which read SOS and, in Hebrew, “Save Us. 3 Hostages.”

Israel has set two red lines for a new hostage release deal: the remaining women and children in captivity must be released first and there will be no end to the war at this juncture.

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“People think ‘there are hostages – it is what it is’. But there are families who cannot carry on with their lives”

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CNN reported a “positive” meeting on Friday between Mossad chief David Barnea and Qatar’s prime minister Mohammad al Thani to discuss a new deal. However, the sides are not even close to an agreement at this juncture, and Israel believes media reports that the Israeli military offensive is likely to end sometime in January is making Hamas adopt a harder negotiating position.

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu maintains that the only way to secure the release of hostages is to increase the military pressure on Hamas. He claimed at the beginning of a cabinet meeting on Sunday that he had received a letter “from dozens of families of our fallen heroes,” in which they wrote: “The citizens and the soldiers are determined to achieve complete victory. You have a mandate to fight, you do not have a mandate to stop in the middle.”

Despite calls from the UK, Germany and France for a ceasefire, fierce fighting continued in Gaza on Sunday. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 18,700 Palestinians have been killed in the war which started on October 7th when 1,200 people were killed and 240 kidnapped in the Hamas attack on southern Israel.

According to the United Nations World Food Programme, around half the people of Gaza are “starving” and do not know where their next meal will come from. A video on Sunday showed Gaza residents stopping a humanitarian aid lorry and looting food and supplies close to the Rafah border crossing. The United Nations refugee agency UNRWA says such incidents make it almost impossible to distribute aid.

The Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza opened on Sunday for the first time for aid lorries since the outbreak of the war. The Israeli gesture to the US is expected to significantly ease the backlog of aid trucks entering into Gaza each day.

The Israeli army on Sunday revealed the discovery of the biggest Hamas tunnel to date. Three meters wide and about 4km (2.5 miles) long, the tunnel ended inside the Jabalya refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, just a few hundred meters from the Erez crossing into Israel.

The tunnel, which the IDF was unaware of, was uncovered after soldiers spotted militants emerging from a tunnel shaft. It was big enough for cars to use and had communications facilities, an electricity grid, a ventilation system and sewage infrastructure.

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