Jerusalem:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed on Sunday to “open the gates of hell” in Gaza if Hamas does not return all hostages, pointing to a joint US-Israeli strategy to take on the Palestinian militants.

“We have a common strategy, and we can’t always share the details of this strategy with the public, including when the gates of hell will be opened, as they surely will if all our hostages are not released until the last one,” Netanyahu said in a joint statement with visiting US Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

“We will eliminate Hamas’s military capability and its political rule in Gaza,” the statement added. “We will bring all our hostages home, and we will ensure that Gaza never again poses a threat to Israel.

“The unequivocal support of the United States on Gaza will help us achieve these objectives faster and set us on a path for a different future,” Netanyahu said.

He added that he discussed with Rubio US President Donald Trump’s “bold vision for Gaza’s future and will work to ensure that vision becomes a reality”.

Trump recently suggested that the US take over the Gaza Strip and turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East”, while resettling the territory’s two million Palestinian residents in other countries, namely Egypt and Jordan.

The proposal has triggered global outrage.

Rubio on Sunday acknowledged that Trump’s proposal for Gaza “may have shocked and surprised” many.

But he said “the president’s also been very bold about his view of what the future for Gaza should be, not the same tired ideas of the past, but something that’s bold and something that, frankly, took courage and vision.

“What cannot continue is the same cycle where we repeat over and over again and wind up in the exact same place,” Rubio said. “Hamas cannot continue as a military or a government force… they must be eliminated… it must be eradicated.”

He added that the first priority for Trump is that the hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack “need to come home, they need to be released”

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Jerusalem:

Israel threatened on Tuesday to resume “intense fighting” in Gaza if no hostages were released this weekend, echoing a warning from US President Donald Trump that has strained the fragile truce deal.

Donald Trump, who has taken credit for securing the agreement that went into effect last month, said that “hell” would break out if Hamas failed to release “all” Israeli hostages by Saturday.

As he was hosting Jordan’s King Abdullah II at the White House on Tuesday, Trump was asked whether his deadline still held, and said “Yes”.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, which has largely halted more than 15 months of fighting in Gaza, hostages were to be released in batches in exchange for Palestinians in Israeli custody. So far, Israel and Hamas have completed five hostage-prisoner swaps.

But the agreement has come under increasing strain in recent days, prompting diplomatic efforts to salvage it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that “if Hamas does not return our hostages by Saturday noon, the ceasefire will end, and the IDF (Israeli military) will resume intense fighting until Hamas is decisively defeated”.

Tensions, which initially spiked after Trump proposed last month taking over Gaza and removing its more than two million inhabitants, have grown following his latest comments.

“As far as I’m concerned, if all of the hostages aren’t returned by Saturday 12 o’clock… I would say cancel it and all bets are off and let hell break out,” Trump said on Monday.

Senior Hamas leader Sami Abu Zuhri said Trump’s remark “further complicates matters”.

“Trump must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties and this is the only way to return” the hostages, he told AFP.

His group said it would postpone the next hostage release, scheduled for Saturday, accusing Israel of violating the deal and calling for it to fulfil its obligations.

‘No more phases’

Netanyahu’s statement, issued after a cabinet meeting on Tuesday, did not specify whether he was referring to all captives, but his Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a far-right leader, called on the premier to “open the gates of hell” if Israel doesn’t get back “all the hostages… by Saturday”.

“No more phases, no more games,” Smotrich said in a statement.

UN chief Antonio Guterres has urged Hamas to proceed with the planned release.

“We must avoid at all costs resumption of hostilities in Gaza that would lead to immense tragedy,” he said on X.

Yemen’s Huthi rebels, who are aligned with Hamas and have launched attacks throughout the war in support of the Palestinians, said on Tuesday they were “ready to launch a military intervention at any time in case of escalation against Gaza”.

The Israeli military said in a statement that it had decided “to raise the level of readiness” of its forces near the Gaza Strip and “increase reinforcements with additional troops, including reservists”.

Outside Netanyahu’s office in Jerusalem, several families of hostages rallied with pictures of their loved ones, calling for the implementation of the existing deal.

“We can’t afford another arm wrestling between the sides. There is a deal. Go for it!” said Zahiro, whose uncle, Avraham Munder, died in captivity in Gaza.

Relatives of four hostages said on Tuesday that recently freed captives told them that their loved ones were alive, but shared concerning details about their conditions.

Avishag Levy, whose cousin Eliya Cohen was abducted from the site of a music festival, told a parliamentary session she had heard from ex-hostages over the weekend that he was being held in chains and suffering from malnutrition and torture.

In the five hostage-prisoner swaps so far, 16 Israeli hostages have been freed in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

‘The people pay the price’

In Gaza, concerns over the fate of the ceasefire were prevalent.

“I pray that the ceasefire holds, but there are no guarantees because the ruling faction in Israel wants war, and I believe there is also a faction within Hamas that wants war,” said Adnan Qassem, 60, from Deir el-Balah.

“The people are the ones who suffer and pay the price.”

Trump’s latest threat came hours after Hamas’s armed wing, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said the hostage release scheduled for Saturday was postponed.

It accused Israel of failing to meet its commitments under the agreement, including on aid, and cited the deaths of three Gazans at the weekend.

But the group said “the door remains open for the prisoner exchange batch to proceed as planned, once the occupation complies”.

Talks on a second phase were supposed to start on day 16 of the truce, but Israel had refused to send negotiators to Doha.

The Gaza war was triggered by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, which resulted in the deaths of 1,211 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of official Israeli figures.

Militants also took 251 hostages, of whom 73 remain in Gaza, including 35 the Israeli military says are dead. Earlier on Tuesday, officials announced the death of Shlomo Mansour, an elderly Israeli hostage whose body is still held in Gaza.

The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza says the war has killed at least 48,218 people in the territory, figures the UN considers reliable.

A UN report issued on Tuesday said that more than $53 billion will be required to rebuild Gaza and end the “humanitarian catastrophe” in the devastated territory.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Jerusalem:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday he would not stop the war in Gaza “now”, with renewed efforts towards a ceasefire underway.

Speaking at a press conference in Jerusalem 14 months into the war against Hamas Palestinian operatives, he said “if we end the war now, Hamas will return, recover, rebuild and attack us again — and that is what we do not want to go back to”.

Netanyahu reiterated that he had set the goal of “the annihilation of Hamas, the elimination of its military and administrative capabilities” to prevent future attacks but said that the objective was not yet complete.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on October 23 that Israel had “managed to dismantle Hamas’s military capacity” and eliminated its senior leadership. With those successes, he said, it was time to “get the hostages home and bring the war to an end with an understanding of what will follow.”

In recent days, there had been signs that months of failed ceasefire and hostage release negotiations might be revived and achieve a breakthrough.

Qatar, a main mediator, said on Saturday there was new “momentum” for negotiations created by the election of Donald Trump in the United States.

A source close to the Hamas delegation said at the same time that Turkey as well as Egypt and Qatar had been “making commendable efforts to stop the war,” and a new round of talks could begin soon.

On Sunday, the prime minister met with the families of hostages held in Gaza and said that Israel’s wars on Hezbollah and Hamas would facilitate negotiations for their release.

Protesters, including relatives of the hostages, have repeatedly called for a deal to free the captives and accused him of prolonging the war.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack which resulted in the deaths of 1,208 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official data.

During the attack, operatives also kidnapped 251 hostages, 96 of whom remain in Gaza, including 34 who the military says are dead.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive in Gaza has killed at least 44,758 people, mostly civilians, according to data from the Hamas-run health ministry that is considered reliable by the UN.

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Jerusalem:

Israel’s army said Friday it had killed Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad’s top commander for the Nur Shams refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

The military said Mohammad Abdullah was “eliminated” on Thursday after Israeli aircraft struck the camp in Tulkarem.

An additional “terrorist” was killed in the operation, which recovered M-16 rifles and vests, it added.

Abdullah was the successor of Muhammad Jabber, also known as Abu Shujaa, who was killed in an Israeli strike in late August. Islamic Jihad is an ally of Hamas, with both groups battling Israeli forces in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Violence has soared in the West Bank since Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel in October last year.

Israeli troops or settlers have killed at least 705 Palestinians in the West Bank since, according to the Ramallah-based health ministry. Israeli officials say at least 24 Israelis, civilians or members of the security forces, have been killed in attacks carried out by Palestinian militants or in Israeli military operations over the same period in the West Bank.

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Khan Younis:

In the ruins of his two-storey home, 11-year-old Mohammed gathers chunks of the fallen roof into a broken pail and pounds them into gravel which his father will use to make gravestones for victims of the Gaza war.

“We get the rubble not to build houses, no, but for tombstones and graves – from one misery to another,” his father, former construction worker Jihad Shamali, 42, says as he cuts through metal salvaged from their home in the southern city of Khan Younis, damaged during an Israeli raid in April.

The work is hard, and at times grim. In March, the family built a tomb for one of Shamali’s sons, Ismail, killed while running household errands.

But it is also a tiny part of the efforts starting to take shape to deal with the rubble left by Israel’s military campaign to eliminate Palestinian militant group Hamas.

The United Nations estimates there is over 42 million tonnes of debris, including both shattered edifices that are still standing and flattened buildings.

That is 14 times the amount of rubble accumulated in Gaza between 2008 and the war’s start a year ago, and over five times the amount left by the 2016-17 Battle of Mosul in Iraq, the U.N. said.

Piled up, it would fill the Great Pyramid of Giza – Egypt’s largest – 11 times. And it is growing daily.

The U.N. is trying to help as Gazan authorities consider how to deal with the rubble, three U.N. officials said.

A U.N.-led Debris Management Working Group plans a pilot project with Palestinian authorities in Khan Younis and the central Gazan city of Deir El-Balah to start clearing roadside debris this month.

“The challenges are huge,” said Alessandro Mrakic, the Gaza Office head for the United Nations’ Development Programme (UNDP) which is co-chairing the working group. “It’s going to be a massive operation, but at the same time, it’s important that we start now.”

Israel’s military has said Hamas fighters hide among civilians and that it will strike them wherever they emerge, while also trying to avoid harming civilians.

Asked about the debris, Israel’s military unit COGAT said it aimed to improve waste-handling and would work with the U.N. to expand those efforts. Mrakic said coordination with Israel was excellent but detailed discussions on future plans were yet to take place.

Tent Amid The Ruins

Israel began its offensive after Hamas militants entered Israel on Oct. 7 last year, killed about 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 people hostage.

Nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in a year of conflict, Palestinian health authorities say.

On the ground, wreckage is piled high above pedestrians and donkey carts on dusty narrow paths that were once busy roads.

“Who is going to come here and clear the rubble for us? No-one. Therefore, we did that ourselves,” taxi driver Yusri Abu Shabab said, having cleared enough debris from his Khan Younis home to erect a tent.

Two-thirds of Gaza’s pre-war structures – over 163,000 buildings – have been damaged or flattened, according to U.N. satellite data. Around a third were high-rise buildings.

After a seven-week war in Gaza in 2014, UNDP and its partners cleared 3 million tonnes of debris – 7% of the total now. Mrakic cited an unpublished preliminary estimate that it would cost $280 million to clear 10 million tonnes, implying around $1.2 billion if the war stopped now.

A U.N. estimate from April suggested it would take 14 years to clear the rubble.

Concealed Bodies

The debris contains unrecovered bodies, as many as 10,000 according to the Palestinian health ministry, and unexploded bombs, Mrakic said.

The International Committee of the Red Cross says the threat is “pervasive” and U.N. officials say some of the debris poses a big injury risk.

Nizar Zurub, from Khan Younis, lives with his son in a home where only a roof remains, hanging at a precarious angle.

The United Nations Environment Programme said an estimated 2.3 million tonnes of debris might be contaminated, citing an assessment of Gaza’s eight refugee camps, some of which have been hit.

Asbestos fibres can cause larynx, ovarian and lung cancer when inhaled.

The World Health Organization has recorded nearly a million cases of acute respiratory infections in Gaza in the past year, without saying how many are linked to dust.

WHO spokesperson Bisma Akbar said dust was a “significant concern”, and could contaminate water and soil and lead to lung disease.

Doctors fear a rise in cancers and birth defects from leaking metals in coming decades. Snake and scorpion bites and skin infections from sandflies are a concern, a UNEP spokesperson said.

Land And Equipment Shortages

Gaza’s rubble has previously been used to help build seaports. The U.N. hopes now to recycle a portion for road networks and bolstering the shoreline.

Gaza, which had a pre-war population of 2.3 million crammed into an area 45 km (28 miles) long and 10 km wide, lacks the space needed for disposal, the UNDP says.

Landfills are now in an Israeli military zone. Israel’s COGAT said they were in a restricted area but that access would be granted.

More recycling means more money to fund equipment such as industrial crushers, Mrakic said. They would have to enter via crossing points controlled by Israel.

Government officials report fuel and machinery shortages because of Israeli restrictions that slow clear-up efforts. The UNEP spokesperson said prolonged approval processes were a “major bottleneck”.

Israel did not specifically comment on allegations it was restricting machinery.

The UNEP says it needs owners’ permission to remove debris, yet the scale of destruction has blurred property boundaries, and some property records have been lost during the war.

Several donors have expressed interest in helping since a Palestinian government-hosted meeting in the West Bank on Aug. 12, Mrakic said, without naming them.

A U.N. official, requesting anonymity to avoid undermining ongoing efforts, said: “Everybody’s concerned whether to invest in rebuilding Gaza if there is no political solution in place.”

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United Nations:

The UN secretary-general denounced Hamas and called for an immediate end to the “shocking violence and bloodshed” in Gaza and Lebanon in a statement Saturday ahead of the anniversary of the Palestinian group’s October 7 attack.

Monday marks one year since the devastating assault on Israel that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, with Lebanon now also pulled into the fray and world leaders warning of a potential all-out regional crisis.

“This is a day for the global community to repeat in the loudest voice our utter condemnation of the abhorrent acts of Hamas, including the taking of hostages,” UN chief Antonio Guterres said in an anniversary message released Saturday evening.

While demanding the hostages’ “immediate and unconditional release,” Guterres also implored Hamas to allow the hostages to be visited by Red Cross personnel.

Hamas militants abducted 251 people on October 7, 97 of whom are still captive in Gaza, including 33 the Israeli military has said are dead.

Guterres additionally voiced concern over the conflict spreading to Lebanon, where Israel in recent days has pounded the Hamas-allied group Hezbollah, killing over a thousand people and forcing more than a million to flee their homes.

“The war that has followed the terrible attacks of one year ago continues to shatter lives and inflict profound human suffering for Palestinians in Gaza, and now the people of Lebanon,” Guterres said.

The October 7 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive on Gaza has so far killed at least 41,825 people, a majority of them civilians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run Palestinian territory. The UN has said those figures are reliable.

“Since October 7th, a wave of shocking violence and bloodshed has erupted,” said Guterres.

“It is time for the release of the hostages,” he said. “Time to silence the guns. Time to stop the suffering that has engulfed the region. Time for peace, international law and justice.”

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Jerusalem:

The Israeli military on Thursday said a strike three months ago killed three senior Hamas leaders in Gaza, where the army has been battling the Palestinian operatives for nearly a year.

The military said the strike killed Rawhi Mushtaha, the head of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip, and Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio for Hamas’s political bureau, and Sami Oudeh, a commander.

Approximately 3 months ago, in a joint IDF and ISA strike in Gaza, the following terrorists were eliminated:

Rawhi Mushtaha, the Head of the Hamas government in Gaza
Sameh al-Siraj, who held the security portfolio on Hamas’ political bureau and Hamas’ Labor Committee
Sami… pic.twitter.com/6xpH6tOOot

— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 3, 2024

“Mushtaha was one of Hamas’ most senior operatives and had a direct impact on decisions relating to Hamas’ force deployment,” said the military in a statement.

The military called Mushtaha the “right-hand man” to Hamas’s top leader Yahya Sinwar.

In 2015, the US State Department had designated Mushtaha as a “specially designated global terrorist”.

The European Council on Foreign Relations described Mushtaha as a member of Hamas’s Gaza politburo who also oversaw its financial affairs.

The ECFR said Siraj was a politburo member, while Oudeh was said to be the leader of the group’s internal security agency.

Israel’s military campaign to wipe out Hamas is believed to have severely weakened the group by killing several of its leaders and thousands of fighters, while also reducing swaths of the territory it rules to rubble.

The Gaza war was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures that include hostages killed in captivity.

Israel’s retaliatory military offensive has killed at least 41,788 people in Gaza, the majority of them civilians, according to figures provided by the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry. The UN has described the figures as reliable.

“Mushtaha was one of Hamas’ most senior operatives and had a direct impact on decisions relating to Hamas’ force deployment,” said the military in a statement.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

“Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades takes responsibility for heroic Jaffa operation,” said Hamas (File

Gaza:

Palestinians said an Israeli strike killed at least 22 people in a school sheltering displaced people in southern Gaza City on Saturday, while the Israeli military said the attack targeted a command centre of Hamas.

The Gaza health ministry said most of those killed were women and children. The Hamas-run government media office said 13 children and six women were among the dead.

The military said it hit a Hamas command centre embedded in the compound that previously served as a school, repeating an accusation that the group uses civilian facilities for military purposes. Hamas denies that.

Reuters footage from the site showed blasted walls, wrecked and burnt furniture, and holes in the ceiling of one room as people tried to salvage what they could of belongings.

“The women and their children were sitting in the playground of the school, the kids were playing, and suddenly two rockets hit them,” said one witness Said Al-Malahi.

Some of the dead were wrapped in blankets and carried away on donkey carts, as ambulances transferred other bodies.

“I couldn’t take it, I did not see a single man that is injured, it was all women and children, let the Arab countries rejoice, let them rejoice and clap for (Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin) Netanyahu and the United States of America,” said another eyewitness, Ahmed Azzam, bitter that regional neighbours were not taking a tougher line against Israel.

MEDICS KILLED

In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, the Gaza health ministry said four health workers were killed by an Israeli strike that hit ministry warehouses. Ambulance crews could not reach the dead or treat the wounded, it added.

In a statement, the Israeli military said forces, operating in Rafah since May, have killed dozens of operatives in recent weeks and dismantled military infrastructure and tunnel shafts.

Israel’s demand to keep control of the southern border line between Rafah and Egypt has been a major sticking point in international efforts to conclude a ceasefire deal.

Hamas says it is focused on an agreement to end the war and get Israeli forces out of Gaza, while Israel says the war can only end once Hamas is eradicated. Another sticking point has been the specifics of an exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel.

This war in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s subsequent assault on the enclave has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, according to the local health ministry, and displaced nearly the entire 2.3 million-strong population.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinian Territories:

Hamas on Sunday called on US, Qatari and Egyptian mediators to implement a ceasefire plan for Gaza put forward by US President Joe Biden, instead of holding “more talks”.

“Hamas calls on the mediators to present a roadmap to put into action what was proposed to Hamas… based on the vision of Biden and the decisions of the UN Security Council, and to force the occupier (Israel) to implement it, rather than hold more talks or bring new proposals,” the Palestinian movement said in a statement.

Mediators have invited both Israel and Hamas for a round of negotiations on Thursday.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)