The plan to release the first hostages as part of the deal between Israel and Hamas was postponed on Wednesday night, just hours before the expected start of a temporary break in fighting.
Israel’s National Security Council said that the first group of hostages will not be released until Friday. An Israeli government person told CNN that the planned break from fighting has been postponed and will start on Friday instead.
“Negotiations to free our hostages are making progress and are still happening. ” The release process will begin on Friday as agreed by both sides.
Israel and Hamas agreed to stop fighting for four days and free at least 50 women and children out of the 230 hostages in Gaza. An Israeli official told CNN that the truce was supposed to start at 10 a. mThe time where you are, it’s 3 o’clock in the morning. He passed the exam on Thursday.
It’s not clear why the delay happened.
A spokesperson from the US National Security Council said on Wednesday that the hostage deal is still agreed upon. They are working on final details for the first day of the deal.
“We believe that we should not take any risks as the hostages start returning home,” said NSC spokesperson Adrienne Watson. “Our main goal is to make sure they come back home safely. ” “We’re making good progress and we hope to start putting it into action on Friday morning. ”
One Israeli official who knows about the situation said it’s not a big deal and just small things that need to be fixed.
But another person from the government told CNN that one reason was because Israel hadn’t gotten the names of the first hostages that Hamas would release.
On Wednesday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu talked to reporters before the delay was announced. He said he was sure the agreement would start soon, but didn’t give many details about how it would happen.
However, people in charge and experts in Israel have always warned that any agreement would be risky until the hostages were safely out of danger.
On Wednesday, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) kept fighting in Gaza by using both soldiers on the ground and planes in the air. They did this in the north-eastern and central parts of Gaza. This happened even though a truce was supposed to begin soon. Places in the south, like Khan Younis and Rafah, were also damaged, as reported by Palestinians.
On Wednesday, before the announcement of the delay, a spokesperson for the Israeli army, Daniel Hagari, said that the upcoming truce is a complicated process and has not been finalized yet.
“It might take a while and have several steps,” he said.
The agreement was a big step forward in diplomacy, coming almost seven weeks after the conflict began. The conflict has led to a serious humanitarian crisis in the area. The families of the hostages felt relieved and very excited when they heard the announcement.
The agreement would also let more humanitarian aid and relief convoys to come in.
The pause can be up to 10 days, but Israeli officials don’t think it will last that long.
Netanyahu said that for every 10 more hostages released, there will be one more day without fighting.
Hamas has 236 people as prisoners in Gaza, and they come from 26 different countries. This information is from the Israeli military. During October 7, a lot of people were taken by force at gunpoint. The attackers were part of Hamas and they killed about 1,200 people in a surprise attack on Israel. This was the biggest attack on Israel since the country started in 1948.
Before the agreement, only a few hostages had been set free.
Around 12,700 people have died in Gaza since October 7, according to the Palestinian health ministry in the West Bank. They got this information from health authorities run by Hamas.
Tag: Israel’s National Security Council
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Israel claims hostages won’t be freed before Friday
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Palestinian people are not drawing censure from the US – Israeli official
Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister, said over the weekend that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people or a nation. This came after Smotrich called for the “erasure” of a Palestinian community just a few weeks earlier.
Jewish nationalist Smotrich asserted that the Zionist drive to build modern-day Israel was the catalyst for the invention of Palestinian nationalism in the previous century.
“Who was the first king of Palestine?
What dialects speak the Palestinians?
Has Palestine ever had its own currency?
Exists a Palestinian culture or history?
Nothing.
In a speech in Paris, Smotrich asserted that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people.US National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby on Monday objected to the comments, saying they would not help to calm tensions in the region.
“We utterly object to that kind of language. And It’s extremely unhelpful to – again – trying to de-escalate the tensions and trying to find a viable two-state solution going forward,” Kirby said, speaking to Israeli Channel 13. “We don’t want to see any rhetoric, any action or rhetoric – quite frankly – that can stand in the way or become an obstacle to a viable two-state solution, and language like that does.”
The Palestinian Authority presidency slammed Smotrich’s remarks as “racist,” calling them “an attempt to falsify history.”
In a statement, the PA asserted that the Palestinian people “have existed on this land forever.”
Hamas, the militant Palestinian Islamist movement that runs Gaza and calls for Israel’s destruction, also called Smotrich’s comments racist, saying they “clearly reflect the fascist policies of colonial settlement expansion and forced eviction of the Palestinian people, on which the occupation state was founded,” in reference to Israel.
Smotrich’s appearance in Paris also caused a diplomatic incident between Israel and Jordan. The podium he was standing at was draped in what appeared to be a variation of the Israeli flag displaying an enlarged map of Israel that included the occupied West Bank, Gaza and most of Jordan.
A spokesperson for Smotrich said the flag used at the event he attended was “set decoration” put there by the conference organizers and that the minister was only a guest, according to Reuters.
Jordan summoned the Israeli ambassador to Amman on Monday in protest, citing Smotrich’s use of the map.
Jordan’s foreign ministry “warned of the seriousness of the continuation of these extremist racist actions issued by the same minister who had previously called for the erasure of the Palestinian village of Huwara.” It added that Smotrich’s actions were a violation the Jordanian-Israel peace treaty.
Israel’s foreign ministry tweeted in response saying it was “committed to the 1994 peace agreement with Jordan” adding that Israel “recognizes the territorial integrity” of Jordan.
Tzachi Hanegbi, head of Israel’s National Security Council, also said he spoke with Jordan’s Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi to reaffirm Israel’s commitment to Jordan’s territorial integrity and the Israel-Jordan peace treaty.
Smotrich’s comments came on the same day that Israeli and Palestinian officials met in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, to try and calm tensions ahead of the Ramadan and Passover holidays. Among other agreements the two sides pledged “to develop a mechanism to curb and counter violence, incitement, and inflammatory statements and actions.”
The minister, who also has some powers over the Israeli unit that controls border crossings and permits for Palestinians, has a long history of denying the existence of a Palestinian nation and has previously made controversial statements about them as well as on other issues like LGBTQ rights.
Earlier this month, he made incendiary comments saying that the Palestinian town of Huwara in the West Bank “needs to be erased” after two Israeli brothers were shot and killed while driving through the town. Israeli settlers went on revenge attacks in the aftermath, where one Palestinian man died. Smotrich later apologized for the remarks saying they had been made in a “storm of emotions”.