Israel hits targets in Gaza as cease-fire with Hamas collapses
The Gaza Bus Stop Attack on Israel, Israel, and its Importance for the Security and Security of the People’s Future: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the United States
The end of the truce and the start of fighting came just as the US Secretary of State was leaving Israel after high-level meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Israel was pressed to extend the temporary truce.
During the week-long pause in fighting, Hamas and other militants in Gaza released more than 100 hostages, most of them Israelis, in return for 240 Palestinians freed from prisons in Israel.
Late Wednesday, Hamas released 10 Israelis and four Thai citizens that its fighters captured in the Oct. 7 attack launched from Gaza on Israeli border communities that killed around 1,200 people, Israel says. The hostages were seized by Hamas during the assault.
Two Israelis and two Russians were released as part of a side-deal brokered by Putin, the third release since the exchanges began on Friday.
The Israeli president thanked the U.S. for its work, which they said was important in the release of hostages. The Bibas family is still being held hostage. Israel says the family, including the parents, a four-year-old girl and 10-month-old infant, were handed off by Hamas to another Palestinian militant faction, but Hamas says the mother and children were killed in an Israeli airstrike.
The U.S. has been focused on securing the release of hostages since the beginning, according to the US diplomat. He said this week’s swaps of captives were a positive development.
It allowed an increase in humanitarian assistance to go to people in Gaza who need it the most. “So this process is producing results. It’s important, and we hope it can continue.
Netanyahu posted a statement on X saying that he would expand the distribution of weapons to Israeli civilians.
The bus stop attack is proof of the obligation to fight with strength and determination against terrorism, which is threatening our citizens, said the war cabinet minister. In Jerusalem, Gaza, in Judea and Samaria, and everywhere,” he wrote. The West Bank can be referred to as Judea and Samaria.
The Palestinians say that Israeli soldiers killed two children during a raid on the city of Jenin. Israel’s military says it killed two militants in the raid.
The health ministry in Gaza says at least 13300 people have been killed since Oct. 7, when the weeklong pause ceased Israel’s onslaught against Hamas.
While the cease-fire has allowed desperately needed aid to reach many Gazans, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres said Wednesday that the delivery of aid “remains completely inadequate to meet the huge needs of more than two million people.”
The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its latest update that convoys that had been unable to get to areas north of the informal line were continuing through Wednesday.
Fuel for hospitals, water and Sanitation facilities, as well as cooking gas that ” has been entering daily from Egypt since the start of the pause” are included in the aid distribution in areas where the majority of internal displaced people are staying.
Gaza has been under Israeli bombardment and a ground campaign that has killed over 13 thousand people, according to the health ministry.
After hostilities resumed, Israel’s military issued a warning to Gazans that “Hamas uses the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields, placing its command and military infrastructure in residential areas, hospitals, mosques, and schools.”
Members of Hamas’ political bureau, issued a statement saying: “What Israel did not achieve during the fifty days before the truce, it will not achieve by continuing its aggression after the truce.” According to Osama Hamden, a senior official with Hamas in Lebanon, the group tried until the last minute to negotiate an extension of the truce, but Israel was only interested in continuing its aggression on the Palestinian people.
The prime minister’s office said that the Israeli government was committed to achieving its goals in the war, including the release of hostages, elimination of Hamas and the safe return of the residents of Israel.
TEL AVIV, Israel — Israel’s warplanes began pounding targets in Gaza early Friday, shortly after the collapse of a cease-fire deal that had allowed the release of more than 100 hostages seized by Hamas militants and hundreds of Palestinians from Israeli jails.
