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It’s official: Israel approves deal with Hamas to free at least 50 hostages in exchange for pause in fighting
(JTA) — Following six weeks of fighting, Israel’s government has agreed to a deal with Hamas that will free about 50 of the hundreds of hostages that Hamas took in its Oct. 7 attack on Israel. Most of those released will be women and children.
The deal is a milestone in the global campaign for the release of the 240 hostages taken captive by the terror group on Oct. 7. That attack, which killed 1,200 people, began a war between Israel and Hamas in which Israel has vowed to depose Hamas, which controls Gaza. Tuesday’s agreement — which was brokered by the United States and Qatar and approved by Israel’s government over far-right opposition — will also include the first sustained pause in the fighting since Oct. 7.
“Before us this evening is a hard decision, but the correct decision,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of the government’s vote. “The entire security establishment supports it, and fully.”
Citing a medieval Jewish sage, he added, “There is no greater commandment than the redemption of hostages, as Ramban said.”
Under the reported deal, 50 hostages will be released over four days starting on Thursday or Friday. Afterward, Hamas can extend the truce by releasing an additional 10 hostages a day. Up to 80 of the estimated 240 hostages in Gaza could be released. The deal does not include the release of Israeli soldiers taken captive, nor does it involve the release of foreign nationals.
Here’s what you need to know about the hostage deal, including what is known about the hostages who are not being released and the opposition the deal faced within the Israeli government.
In exchange, Israel will release three Palestinian prisoners for every hostage released, 150 for the initial group released in the coming days, and up to 240 Palestinians in total. That represents only a tiny fraction of the approximately 5,000 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons on security offenses prior to Oct. 7.
Israel is also agreeing to pause its offensive in Gaza for at least four days and to suspend aerial surveillance for six hours a day during that time, in part so Hamas can locate additional hostages. Israeli soldiers will remain in northern Gaza, which they invaded last month, during the pause. On Tuesday, ahead of the vote on the agreement, Netanyahu vowed that the fighting would continue after the pause.
“The war will continue until we achieve all our goals: destruction of Hamas, the return of all of our hostages, and to ensure that the day after Hamas, Gaza will no longer threaten Israel,” he said. “There will be no force there that supports terrorism, that educates its children in terrorism, and that threatens the state of Israel.”
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The post It’s official: Israel approves deal with Hamas to free at least 50 hostages in exchange for pause in fighting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency
The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation
Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack
A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.