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Tag: Hamas

  • Hamas says ‘ball is in Israel’s court’ after hostage offer

    Hamas says ‘ball is in Israel’s court’ after hostage offer

    Hamas said Saturday that “the ball is in Israel’s court” after offering to release an Israeli-US hostage and return the bodies of four others as part of Gaza truce talks.

    Following the offer on Friday, Israel said the Palestinian militants had “not budged a millimetre” after a proposal from US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy.

    The first phase of the truce, which began in January, ended on March 1 without agreement on next steps. A Hamas official said negotiations began in Doha on Tuesday.

    “The ball is in Israel’s court,” a Hamas spokesman said.

    “We want to solidify the ceasefire agreement and force (Israel) to implement its terms,” Abdul Latif al-Qanou told AFP, accusing Israel of “delaying” its enforcement.

    He pointed to the ongoing blockage of humanitarian aid entering Gaza since March 2.

    A Hamas political bureau member, speaking anonymously, told AFP the proposal to release 21-year-old soldier Edan Alexander — abducted during Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack — and return the bodies of four other Israeli-American hostages was part of a “unique agreement”.

    In exchange, Israel would free Palestinian prisoners, with the number still under negotiation, the official said.

    The official said the proposed exchange was conditioned with simultaneously starting negotiations for the implementation of the truce’s second phase, with the talks ending within a 50-day period, he said.

    The proposal also called for the immediate opening of all border crossings to allow the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Philadelphi corridor, he added.

    The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday accused Hamas of resorting to “manipulation and psychological warfare”.

    Netanyahu’s office said he would meet late Saturday with several ministers “to receive a detailed report from the negotiation team and decide next steps towards freeing the hostages”.

    The White House on Friday accused Hamas of making “entirely impractical” demands and “making a very bad bet that time is on its side”.

    During the truce’s initial six-week phase which came into effect on January 19, militants released 33 hostages, including eight who were deceased, in exchange for about 1,800 Palestinian detainees held in Israeli prisons.

    There are still 58 hostages held in Gaza, 34 of whom the Israeli army has declared dead.

  • Israeli army admits failure on Oct 7, says it underestimated Hamas

    Israeli army admits failure on Oct 7, says it underestimated Hamas

    An internal Israeli army investigation into Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack released on Thursday acknowledged the military’s “complete failure” to prevent the deadly assault, saying that for years it had underestimated the group’s capabilities.

    The attack, which left hundreds of Israelis dead, sparked a devastating war in Gaza, which killed tens of thousands of Palestinians.

    “October 7 was a complete failure, the IDF (military) failed in fulfilling its mission to protect Israeli civilians,” a senior Israeli military official said as he briefed reporters about the inquiry’s findings.

    “Too many civilians died that day asking themselves in their hearts or out loud, where was the IDF,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity in accordance with military protocols.

    In a summary of the report shared with journalists, the military said: “The Israel Defense Forces failed to protect Israeli citizens. The Gaza Division was overrun in the early hours of the war, as terrorists took control and carried out massacres in the communities and roads in the area.”

    The military official explained that the army was “overconfident” and had miscalculated Hamas’s military capabilities ahead of the attack.

    The inquiry, which includes 77 separate investigations into what transpired in communities, army bases and multiple confrontation points around the Gaza periphery, is in the process of being presented to those directly affected.

    This is still only a “slither of the whole process”, the official said. Additional inquiries, including one into what happened at a music festival in the desert, are still to come.

    – Among army’s ‘greatest failures’ –

    The Hamas attack resulted in the deaths of 1,218 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures, which include hostages killed in captivity.

    Out of 251 people taken hostage that day, 58 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the military says are dead.

    Israel’s retaliatory campaign in Gaza has killed at least 48,365 people, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

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    “This was one of the most horrific events ever to take place in Israel,” the army official said. “It was one of the IDF’s greatest failures.”

    The official said the inquiry was carried out over 15 months and focuses on four key areas: military perceptions ahead of October 7; intelligence failures; events the night prior to the attack; and the army’s actions on the day along with its efforts to regain control in the days that followed.

    “We did not even imagine such a scenario,” the army official said, noting that Israel’s attention was on threats from Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah.

    The official said the army had not maintained “a comprehensive understanding of the enemy’s military capabilities” and that it was “overconfident in its knowledge”.

    “We were addicted to precise intel,” a second senior military official said, explaining that despite signs Hamas was preparing to attack, the army was too focused on what it believed was accurate information.

    – Three waves of attacks –

    The probe found that Hamas’s attack happened in three waves and saw more than 5,000 people enter Israel from Gaza at its height.

    “The first wave… included more than 1,000 Nukhba (Hamas’s elite force) terrorists, who infiltrated under the cover of heavy fire,” the summary of the report said.

    It said the second wave involved some 2,000 militants while the third saw hundreds more militants join the incursion, along with several thousand civilians.

    “In total, approximately 5,000 terrorists infiltrated Israeli territory during the attack,” the report said. Hamas has maintained that hundreds of its fighters had carried out the attack.

    The official said the first few hours of the attack were critical and saw the most killings and abductions.

    It was then that Hamas’s elite unit knocked out the military’s communications system and its command and control centres, creating chaos as the army struggled to regain control.

    Responding to the inquiry on Thursday, Israel’s armed forces chief said he took full responsibility for failing to prevent the Hamas attack.

    “The responsibility is mine. I was the commander of the army on October 7, and I also bear the full responsibility for all of you,” Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi, who announced his resignation last month, said in a video statement.

    In addition to Halevi, the head of the army’s southern command Major General Yaron Finkelman, announced his resignation.

    Military intelligence chief Major General Aharon Haliva stepped down in August.

  • Hamas hands over four Israeli captives’ bodies in Gaza

    Hamas hands over four Israeli captives’ bodies in Gaza

    Hamas handed over coffins it said contain the bodies of four Israeli hostages on Thursday, including those of the Bibas family who became symbols of the ordeal that has gripped Israel since the Gaza war began.

    The transfer of the bodies is the first by Hamas since its October 7, 2023 attack on Israel triggered the war, and is taking place under a fragile ceasefire that has seen living hostages exchanged for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons.

    The ceremony to return the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young boys —- Kfir and Ariel -— and a fourth captive, Oded Lifshitz, 83 at the time of his capture, took place at a former cemetery in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis.

    Ahead of the handover, Hamas displayed four black coffins on a stage erected on the sandy patch of ground. A banner behind them depicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a blood-stained vampire. An armed militant stood nearby.

    Each casket bore a small photo of each of the deceased. White mock-up missiles placed near the coffins bore the inscription: “They were killed by USA bombs.”

    A militant, his face wrapped in a red and white keffiyeh scarf, sat on the stage to complete documents with a Red Cross official before the coffins were loaded into Red Cross vehicles, AFPTV images showed.

    The Israeli military said later that “the hostages’ bodies were handed over” to it and the Shin Bet internal security agency in Gaza.

    Hundreds of people gathered to witness the ceremony. A fence had been erected to keep onlookers away from the immediate area where the handover to the Red Cross was to occur.

    Armed men in military fatigues and wearing Hamas headbands were ubiquitous, standing near the stage for the ceremony — carefully choreographed as for previous transfers of hostages during the truce.

    Footage of the family’s abduction, filmed and broadcast by Hamas during their attack, showed the mother and her sons Ariel, then four, and Kfir, just nine months old, being seized from their home near the Gaza border.

    Yarden Bibas, the boys’ father and Shiri’s husband, was abducted separately that day and released from the Gaza Strip in a previous hostage-prisoner exchange on February 1.

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    – ‘Day of grief’ –

    The repatriation of their bodies is part of the first six-week phase of a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which took effect on January 19 after more than 15 months of fighting in Gaza.

    Netanyahu said Thursday would be “a very difficult day for the State of Israel -— a heartbreaking day, a day of grief”.

    Under the ceasefire’s first phase, 19 Israeli hostages have been released by militants so far in exchange for more than 1,100 Palestinian prisoners in a series of Red Cross-mediated swaps.

    Of the remaining 14 Gaza hostages eligible for release under phase one, Israel says eight are dead.

    The Bibas family members became national symbols of the despair that has gripped the nation since the Hamas attack and hostage takings.

    While their deaths are largely accepted as fact abroad after Hamas said an Israeli air strike killed them early in the war, Israel has never confirmed the claim and many remained unconvinced — including the Bibas family.

    Late on Wednesday, the Israeli campaign group the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said it had been informed about the “heart-shattering” news of the deaths of the three Bibas family members.

    The Bibas family said it would wait for a confirmation.

    “Should we receive devastating news, it must come through the proper official channels after all identification procedures are completed,” it said in a statement late Wednesday.

    The national forensic medicine institute in Tel Aviv has mobilised 10 doctors to expedite the identification process, public broadcaster Kan reported.

    – Single swap –

    Israel and Hamas announced a deal earlier this week for the return of the remains of eight hostages in two groups this week and next, as well as the release of the last six living Israeli captives on Saturday.

    The hostages’ forum named the six as Eliya Cohen, Tal Shoham, Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, Hisham al-Sayed, and Avera Mengistu.

    The ceasefire in Gaza has held despite accusations of violations on both sides. It has also been under strain from US President Donald Trump’s widely condemned plan to take control of rubble-strewn Gaza and relocate its population of more than two million Palestinians.

    Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Tuesday that talks would begin “this week” on the truce’s second phase, which is expected to lay out a more permanent end to the war.

    Senior Hamas official Taher al-Nunu told AFP on Wednesday that Hamas was ready to free all remaining hostages held in Gaza in a single swap during phase two.

    He did not clarify how many hostages were currently being held by Hamas or other militant groups.

    Hamas and its allies took 251 people hostage during their attack. Prior to Thursday’s handover, there were 70 hostages in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead.

    That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.

    Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 48,297 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory that the United Nations considers reliable.