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Israel and Hamas set to resume indirect talks as fallout continues from IDF killing of 3 hostages
(JTA) — Israel and Hamas appear set to restart indirect negotiations over releasing Israeli hostages, and a pause in the fighting in Gaza, days after Israeli troops mistakenly killed three hostages who were trying to escape the terror group.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Israel with an agenda that includes pressing the Israelis to slow the civilian death toll in Gaza.
David Barnea, the chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service, is due to travel to Europe this week for negotiations with the prime minister of Qatar, where Hamas’ leadership is based. The report of this trip comes days after he canceled another trip to Qatar for negotiations. According to Reuters, Hamas has demanded authority over which hostages it will release in a future deal, a condition Israel accepted, though it has said it will need to view the list of names in advance.
The renewed momentum toward negotiations comes as leaders of Israel’s defense establishment apologized for the incident Friday, in which soldiers fighting in a Gaza City-area neighborhood reportedly fired on the three men against protocol. The men, according to reports, were waving a white cloth and yelling in Hebrew, and a photograph from the area shows a wall graffitied in Hebrew with the message “Help, 3 hostages.”
The incident has spurred outrage in Israel, in particular from the family members of hostages, who have pressed their government to resume indirect negotiations toward the release of hostages. In November, Israel and Hamas paused the fighting for seven days in exchange for Hamas releasing more than 100 of the hostages it took captive in its invasion on Oct. 7, while Israel released hundreds of Palestinians security prisoners. More than 100 hostages are thought to remain in Gaza.
The families of hostages protested in the wake of the incident, and according to the Times of Israel, Avi Shamriz, the father of one of the killed hostages, told Israeli media, “The IDF abandoned my son on October 7, and the IDF murdered my son on December 14. That’s what happened.”
In remarks to troops on Sunday, IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi told soldiers to wait before firing on people who have their hands up or are waving a white flag.
“You see two people, they’re not threatening you, they’re unarmed, their hands are up and they’re not wearing shirts — take two seconds,” Halevi said. “And I want to tell you something no less important: What if it’s two Gazans with a white flag who come out to surrender? What, do we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.”
In a video on Saturday night, Halevi said that as the head of the military, he was “responsible for what happened, and we will do everything to keep similar things from happening as the fighting continues.” He added that Israeli soldiers in Gaza had encountered Hamas fighters drawing them into traps, which may have led the soldiers to suspect that the hostages were combatants.
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The post Israel and Hamas set to resume indirect talks as fallout continues from IDF killing of 3 hostages appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
The post Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
The post Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
The post Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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