Tel Aviv:

The sister of an Israeli hostage whose body was recovered from Gaza last week struck a solemn tone Sunday as she laid him to rest after thousands attended his funeral.

“I feared this ending but I wanted so much for it to end differently,” Avivit Yablonka told AFP at the funeral of her brother Chanan.

Chanan, 42, was murdered on October 7 in Hamas’s unprecedented attack, while trying to escape from the Nova music festival where at least 364 people were killed.

His body was taken to the Gaza Strip by militants but was retrieved on Friday by Israeli troops after spending 230 days in captivity.

In the space of a week, the Israeli army has announced the death of eight hostages who had been presumed to be alive — five Israelis, two Thais and a French-Mexican dual national.

The army also retrieved seven bodies — including Chanan’s — that had been held in Gaza since October 7.

Hopes have since faded among the families of other hostages whose whereabouts are unknown.

Militants took 252 hostages during the attack, 121 of whom remain in Gaza, including 37 the Israeli army says are dead.

Dozens of hostage relatives gathered outside the home of Chanan’s parents Sunday for a silent procession to Tel Aviv’s Kiryat Shaul cemetery, accompanied by thousands waving Israeli flags.

The Yablonka family had urged people to join the march in solidarity with the hostages.

“We have to bring everyone back — this march is for him and for the release of all the hostages,” Avivit said.

Surrounded by crowds of people, Chanan’s family said goodbye.

– ‘Funeral to funeral’ –

The war in Gaza broke out after Hamas’s attack on southern Israel, which resulted in the deaths of more than 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed at least 35,984 people in Gaza, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry.

Before she learned of her brother’s death, Avivit, 48, attended the funeral of Ron Benjamin, who was found in the same tunnel complex in northern Gaza as her brother, according to the army.

“I’m scared. I go from funeral to funeral. I’m so scared, but I have hope, I’m not giving up,” she said at the time.

A father of two, Chanan had played for the Hapoel Tel-Aviv football club in his youth, and remained a fan.

His family had not heard from him since October 7, and was told he was in Gaza 90 days after his disappearance.

“We thought they were coming back alive, but they’re coming back in coffins,” Avivit said before laying her brother to rest.

Avivit said she wants “to believe that the government really wants to bring them all back and that there are difficulties in negotiating with such murderers”.

She said last week she had not received a phone call from any minister or lawmaker.

– Anger at government –

Her anger is shared by Jonathan Dekel-Chen, professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, whose son Sagi is being held hostage in Gaza.

“My anger is only growing,” he told AFP.

“We see that there is no progress for the return of the hostages… Israeli society is with us but the government is not doing enough to bring them home.”

Yet he remains hopeful of finding his son alive. He was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, leaving his pregnant wife and two daughters behind.

Sagi’s wife Avital has since given birth to a daughter Shahar, which means “dawn” in English.

Around 75 people from kibbutz Nir Oz were captured on October 7.

Dekel-Chen said his “daily” dream was to see his son reunited with his entire family, including children Gali, 3, and Bar, 7.

“They run to him and he, on his two legs, runs to his wife Avital and Shahar, the baby, and finally embraces him, and resumes a normal life,” he said, describing his recurring dream.

“This is my mission. I won’t stop until it happens.”

At the entrance to the university library, tears in his eyes, he stared at a portrait of his son displayed at the reception desk.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)

The United States believes the remaining differences between Israel and Hamas can be bridged in negotiations over the Palestinian militant group’s latest ceasefire proposal, as talks resume in Cairo on Wednesday.

Israeli forces on Tuesday seized the main border crossing between Gaza and Egypt in Rafah, the southern Gaza city where more than one million displaced Palestinians have sought shelter during Israel’s seven-month-old offensive. This cut off a vital route for aid into the tiny enclave, where hundreds of thousands of people are homeless and hungry.

In Cairo, all five delegations participating in ceasefire talks on Tuesday — Hamas, Israel, the U.S., Egypt and Qatar — reacted positively to the resumption of negotiations, and meetings were expected to continue on Wednesday morning, two Egyptian sources said.

CIA Director Bill Burns was to travel from Cairo to Israel later on Wednesday to meet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials, a source familiar with his travel said.

Israel on Monday declared that a three-phase proposal approved by Hamas was unacceptable because terms had been softened.

White House spokesperson John Kirby said Hamas presented a revised proposal, and the new text suggests the remaining gaps can “absolutely be closed.” Speaking on Tuesday, he declined to specify what those were.

Since the only pause in the conflict so far, a week-long ceasefire in November, the two sides have been blocked by Hamas’ refusal to free more Israeli hostages without a promise of a permanent end to the conflict and Israel’s insistence that it would discuss only a temporary halt.

Israeli army footage on Tuesday showed tanks rolling through the Rafah crossing complex between Gaza and Egypt, and the Israeli flag raised on the Gaza side. Israel says Rafah is Hamas fighters’ last stronghold.

Hamas official Osama Hamdan, speaking to reporters in Beirut on Tuesday, warned that if Israel’s military aggression continued in Rafah, there would be no truce agreement.

Israel’s military said it was conducting a limited operation in Rafah to kill fighters and dismantle infrastructure used by Hamas, which runs Gaza. It told civilians, many of whom were previously displaced from other parts of Gaza earlier in the conflict, to go to an “expanded humanitarian zone” some 20 km (12 miles) away.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres appealed to Israel and Hamas to spare no effort to agree to a truce. “Make no mistake – a full-scale assault on Rafah would be a human catastrophe,” Guterres said.

In Geneva, U.N. humanitarian office spokesperson Jens Laerke said “panic and despair” were gripping the people in Rafah.

Heavy shelling in Rafah

Residents reported heavy tank shelling on Tuesday evening in some areas of eastern Rafah. A Rafah municipal building caught fire after Israeli shelling, and one Palestinian was killed and several wounded, medics said. An Israeli strike also killed two Palestinians on a motorcycle, they said.

Health officials said Abu Yousef Al-Najar, the main hospital in Rafah, closed on Tuesday after heavy bombardment nearby led medical staff and around 200 patients to flee.

“They have gone crazy. Tanks are firing shells and smoke bombs cover the skies,” said Emad Joudat, 55, a Gaza City resident displaced in Rafah.

The U.N. and other international aid agencies said the closing of the two crossings into southern Gaza — Rafah and Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom — virtually cut the enclave off from outside aid and very few stores were available inside.

Families have been crammed into tented camps and makeshift shelters, suffering from shortages of food, water, medicine and other essentials.

Red Crescent sources in Egypt said shipments had completely halted. “These crossings are a lifeline… They need to be reopened without any delay,” Philippe Lazzarini, head of U.N. aid agency UNRWA, said on X.

The White House said it had been told the Kerem Shalom crossing would re-open on Wednesday and fuel deliveries through Rafah would resume then too. According to Hamas officials, a draft proposal and an official briefed on the talks, the proposal that Hamas approved on Monday included a first phase with a six-week ceasefire, an influx of aid to Gaza, the return of 33 Israeli hostages, alive or dead, and release by Israel of 30 detained Palestinian children and women for each released Israeli hostage.

Critics of the Gaza war have urged U.S. President Joe Biden to pressure Israel to change course. The U.S., Israeli’s closest ally and main weapons supplier, has delayed some arms shipments to Israel for two weeks, according to four sources on Tuesday.

The White House and Pentagon declined comment, but this would be the first such delay since the Biden administration offered its full support to Israel after Hamas’ October 7 attack.

Israel’s offensive has killed 34,789 Palestinians, most of them civilians, in the conflict, the Gaza Health Ministry said.

The war began when Hamas militants attacked Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and abducting about 250 others, of whom 133 are believed to remain in captivity in Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.

Tel Aviv:

The families of hostages held in the Gaza Strip appealed on Saturday for Jewish Israelis to leave an empty chair at their traditional Seder meals marking the beginning of Passover on Monday.  

“The Seder night is approaching and this year we will have to leave an empty chair,” said Ofir Angrest, whose brother Matan was kidnapped on October 7, during the weekly gathering of hostage families in Tel Aviv with hundreds of onlookers. 

Declaring that he was addressing the Israeli cabinet, he said: “Enough! After more than six months, you’re simply disrespecting me and the families of the hostages.”

The idea was backed by Israeli President Isaac Herzog in a video posted to X.

Hamas took around 250 hostages during its unprecedented attack on southern Israel on October 7.

Israel believes that 129 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.

Around 100 were released during a ceasefire in November.

Sofi Cohen Ben Dor, daughter of the famous Israeli spy Eli Cohen, also spoke at the gathering. Her father was hanged in Damascus in 1965 after infiltrating elite circles in Syria in the early 1960s and his body was never returned to Israel.

“His body is still kept for 60 years in an unknown place in Syria. Israel did not create the opportunity to return his body for burial in Israel,” she said. 

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

Israeli police members stand guard as people protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government and to call for the release of hostages kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack on Israel by the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas from Gaza, in Tel Aviv, Israel, April 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: REUTERS

Israel said on Saturday its special forces had recovered the body of a hostage killed while being held captive in Gaza, as the Palestinian enclave’s dominant Islamist movement Hamas said it would take part in a new round of ceasefire talks in Cairo.

Almost six months into the war, Israel has faced protests at home demanding a deal to free the dwindling number of live hostages from Hamas’s October 7 cross-border rampage. Western countries, meanwhile, have voiced outrage over what they see as an unacceptably high Palestinian civilian toll and the accompanying humanitarian crisis.

The body of Elad Katzir, a 47-year-old Israeli farmer, was unearthed by commandos in southern Khan Younis overnight, the military said. He had been killed by his Palestinian Islamic Jihad captors and buried there in mid-January, it said, citing intelligence information about which it declined to elaborate.

Islamic Jihad, an ally of Hamas, had no immediate comment.

Katzir was among 253 people dragged into Gaza by Hamas-led gunmen who killed some 1,200 others in southern Israel, according to official tallies, sparking an offensive that medics in the enclave say has killed more than 33,000 Palestinians.

His father Avraham was killed in their kibbutz, Nir Oz, and his mother Hanna was also taken hostage but freed in November under a truce. Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been to secure another that might return some of the 129 remaining hostages.

Angered by an Israeli air strike that killed aid workers in Gaza, U.S. President Joe Biden on Thursday urged an “immediate ceasefire” and for Israel to boost humanitarian relief measures.

Hamas said it would send a delegation to Cairo on Sunday for a new round of mediated talks. Israel was undecided on whether to attend, an Israeli official said, citing concern that the event would be “more political theatre than actual progress”.

Hamas wants any deal to bring about an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel has said that, after any truce, it would topple Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction.

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Palestinians gather on a beach in the hope of getting aid air-dropped over Gaza, amid the ongoing the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the southern Gaza Strip on February 27, 2024.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Israel and Hamas are inching toward a new deal that would free some of the roughly 130 hostages held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for a weekslong pause in the war, now in its fifth month.

U.S. President Joe Biden says a deal could go into effect as early as Monday, ahead of what is seen as an unofficial deadline — the start of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, around March 10.

A deal would bring some respite to desperate people in Gaza, who have borne a staggering toll, as well as to the anguished families of Israeli hostages taken during Hamas’ October 7 attack that sparked the war.

Here is a look at the emerging agreement.

According to a senior official from Egypt, a six-week ceasefire would go into effect, and Hamas would agree to free up to 40 hostages — mostly civilian women, at least two children, and older and sick captives. Israel would release at least 300 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the official said.

Israel would also allow displaced Palestinians to return to certain areas in northern Gaza, which was the first target of Israel’s ground offensive and suffered widespread destruction, according to the official from Egpyt, which is mediating the deal along with the U.S. and Qatar.

The Egyptian official said aid deliveries would be ramped up during the cease-fire, with 300 to 500 trucks entering the beleaguered territory per day, far more than the daily average number of trucks entering since the start of the war.

The deliveries to areas across Gaza would be facilitated by Israel, whose forces would refrain from attacks on them and on police escorting the aid convoys, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss details of the talks with journalists.

Despite Mr. Biden’s optimism, both sides continue to posture ahead of any final agreement even as talks continue in Qatar. Both Israeli and Hamas officials downplayed any sense of progress.

Israel and Hamas have been far apart on their terms for a deal in the past, dragging out negotiations that appeared to have momentum.

Israel wants all female soldiers included in the first phase of hostage releases, according to an Israeli official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing talks. Hamas views all soldiers as more significant bargaining chips and is likely to press back on this demand. The Egyptian official said the female soldiers were at this point being held off until after the first release.

The Egyptian official said the sides also are discussing how many Palestinians would be allowed to return to northern Gaza and whether to limit their return to women and men over 50.

Talks are also pinning down which areas of Gaza that Israel would withdraw troops from, the Egyptian official said, adding that Israel wants Hamas to refrain from using those it left as staging grounds for attacks. It also wants Hamas to stop firing rockets at southern Israel. Hamas has so far rejected both demands, the official said.

The emerging deal leaves a door open for Israel to operate in the southern border town of Rafah once it expires. More than half of Gaza’s population has fled to the southern city on the Egyptian border. Israel wants to destroy what it says are the few Hamas battalions left standing there.

During the temporary ceasefire, both sides would negotiate toward an extension of the deal that the Egyptian official said would include the release of all the female soldiers in exchange for a higher number of imprisoned Palestinians, including those serving long sentences for deadly attacks.

The U.S. hopes the new deal will be a launching pad for implementing its vision for a postwar Gaza that would eventually lead to the creation of a Palestinian state. It wants Gaza to be governed by a revamped Palestinian Authority, which administers part of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. On Monday, it took a first step that could usher in U.S.-backed reforms by disbanding the self-rule government.

Israel wants to retain overall security control in the Gaza Strip and has rejected having world powers impose a state on it.

Israeli ground forces pushed deeper into Gaza on Monday, advancing in tanks and other armored vehicles on the territory’s main city and freeing a soldier held captive by Hamas militants. The Israeli Prime Minister rejected calls for a ceasefire as airstrikes landed near hospitals where thousands of Palestinians are sheltering beside the wounded.

The military said a soldier captured during Hamas’ brutal October 7 incursion was rescued in Gaza — the first rescue since the weekslong war began. Military officials provided few details but said in a statement that Pvt. Ori Megidish, 19, was “doing well” and had met with her family.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu welcomed her home, saying the “achievement” by Israel’s security forces “illustrates our commitment to free all the hostages.”

He also rejected calls for a ceasefire to facilitate the release of captives or end the war, which he has said will be long and difficult. “Calls for a ceasefire are calls for Israel to surrender to Hamas,” he told a news conference. “That will not happen.”

Mr. Netanyahu, who faces mounting anger over Israel’s failure to prevent the worst surprise attack on the country in a half century, also said he had no plans to resign.

Hostage situation

Hamas and other militant groups are believed to be holding some 240 captives, including men, women and children. Mr. Netanyahu has faced mounting pressure to secure their release even as Israel acts to crush Hamas and end its 16-year rule over the territory.

Hamas, which has released four hostages, has said it would let the others go in return for thousands of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, including many implicated in deadly attacks on Israelis. Israel has dismissed the offer, and Mr. Netanyahu said the ground invasion “creates the possibility” of getting the hostages out, adding that Hamas will “only do it under pressure.”

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Hamas released a short video Monday purporting to show three other female captives. One of the women delivers a brief statement — likely under duress — criticising Israel’s response to the hostage crisis. It was not clear when the Hamas video was made.

Amos Aloni, whose daughter Danielle appeared in the video, told reporters that he and his wife were shocked when she appeared on TV but also felt “relief from her being alive and seeing her.”

Gaza operations

The military has been vague about its operations inside Gaza, including the location and number of troops. Israel has declared a new “phase” in the war but stopped short of declaring an all-out ground invasion.

Larger ground operations have been launched both north and east of Gaza City. Israel says many of Hamas’ forces and much of its militant infrastructure, including hundreds of miles (kilometers) of tunnels, are in Gaza City, which before the war was home to over 650,000 people, a population comparable to that of Washington, D.C.

Though Israel ordered Palestinians to flee the north, where Gaza City is located, and move south, hundreds of thousands remain, in part because Israel has also bombarded targets in so-called safe zones. Around 117,000 displaced people hoping to stay safe from strikes are staying in hospitals in northern Gaza, alongside thousands of patients and staff, according to U.N. figures.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, known as UNRWA, says nearly 672,000 Palestinians are sheltering in its schools and other facilities across Gaza, which have reached four times their capacity.

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini accused Israel of “collective punishment” of the Palestinians, and of forcing their displacement from northern Gaza to the south, where they are still not safe.

Death toll

The death toll among Palestinians passed 8,300, mostly women and children, the Gaza Health Ministry said Monday. The figure is without precedent in decades of Israeli-Palestinian violence. More than 1.4 million people in Gaza have fled their homes.

Over 1,400 people have died on the Israeli side, mainly civilians killed during Hamas’ initial attack, also an unprecedented figure.

Lazzarini said 64 of the agency’s staff were killed in the past three weeks — the latest just two hours before he addressed an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting, when an agency security official was killed with his wife and eight children.

‘Trapped’ Gazans

Most Gazans “feel trapped in a war they have nothing to do with” and “feel the world is equating all of them to Hamas,” he told the Security Council.

Video circulating on social media showed an Israeli tank and bulldozer in central Gaza blocking the territory’s main north-south highway.

The video, taken by a local journalist, shows a car approaching an earth barrier across the road. The car stops and turns around. As it heads away, a tank appears to open fire, and an explosion engulfs the car. The journalist, in another car, races away in terror, screaming, “Go back! Go back!” at an approaching ambulance and other vehicles.

The Gaza Health Ministry later said three people were killed in the car that was hit.

Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, an Israeli military spokesman, declined to comment on where Israeli forces are deployed. He said additional infantry and armored, engineering and artillery units had entered Gaza and the operations would continue to “expand and intensify.”

The military said troops have killed dozens of militants who attacked from inside buildings and tunnels. It said that in the last few days, it had struck more than 600 militant targets, including weapons depots and anti-tank missile launching positions. Palestinian militants have continued firing rockets into Israel, including toward its commercial hub, Tel Aviv.

Hamas said its fighters clashed with Israeli troops who entered the northwest. It was not possible to independently confirm battlefield claims made by either side.

Hospitals under threat

Meanwhile, crowded hospitals in northern Gaza came under growing threat.

Gaza’s Health Ministry shared video footage that appeared to show an explosion and a column of smoke near the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital for cancer patients. The hospital director, Dr. Sobhi Skaik, said it had sustained damage in a strike that endangered patients.

All 10 hospitals operating in northern Gaza have received evacuation orders, the U.N.’s office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs said. Staff have refused to leave, saying evacuation would mean death for patients on ventilators.

Strikes hit within 50 meters (yards) of Al Quds Hospital after it received two calls from Israeli authorities on Sunday ordering it to evacuate, the Palestinian Red Crescent rescue service said. Some windows were blown out, and rooms were covered in debris. It said 14,000 people are sheltering there.

Israel says it targets Hamas fighters and infrastructure and that the militants operate among civilians, putting them in danger.

Conditions deterioriating

Beyond the fighting, conditions for civilians in Gaza are continually deteriorating.

With no central power for weeks and little fuel, hospitals are struggling to keep emergency generators running to operate incubators and other life-saving equipment. UNRWA has been trying to keep water pumps and bakeries running.

On Sunday, the largest convoy of humanitarian aid yet — 33 trucks — entered the territory from Egypt, and another 26 entered on Monday. Relief workers say the amount is still far less than what is needed for the population of 2.3 million people.

The fighting has raised concerns that the violence could spread across the region. Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah have engaged in daily skirmishes along Israel’s northern border.

In the occupied West Bank, Israel carried out airstrikes Monday against militants clashing with its forces in the Jenin refugee camp. Hamas said four of its fighters were killed there. As of Sunday, Israeli forces and settlers have killed 123 Palestinians, including 33 minors, in the West Bank, half of them during search-and-arrest operations, the U.N. said.

New Delhi:

Hamas has threatened to execute one hostage every time Israel drops a bomb, without warning, on a Palestinian home in the Gaza Strip, Reuters said Tuesday, as the increasingly bloody war between the two sides rolls into a fourth day with no end in sight. The group has 150 hostages – including children and a Holocaust survivor – grabbed from border towns and kibbutzim in attacks that began early Saturday.

Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida said, “Every targeting of our people without warning will be met with the execution of one civilian hostage”. AFP reported that four hostages have already died (it is unclear if they were Israelis or other nationals) but also that they were killed during Israeli air strikes.

The hostages present a significant problem for an Israeli government that has vowed to respond to Hamas’ attacks with a “massive” assault and “unprecedented force”; Palestinians are bracing for a vicious response after Tel Aviv called up over three lakh soldiers, including reservists, ahead of a ground assault.

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Public opinion has, so far been firmly with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He has the full support of the opposition too; ex-PM and current Leader of the Opposition, Yair Lapid, told NDTV Monday, “Nobody cares about politics right now… it doesn’t matter.”

READ | “Nobody Cares About Politics Right Now”: Israel Opposition Leader To NDTV

However, some experts feel Israelis will not “forgive” their leader if ensuring hostages’ safety, and rescuing them, is not a priority. “The citizens’ attitude would be ‘you have failed to ensure our security, bring us the hostages back’,” Sylvaine Bulle, a French sociologist studying Israel, told AFP. 

Ms Bulle also predicted tension between politicians and the military if hostages were killed.

Will the Israel government risk public sentiment in its bid for revenge for Hamas’ attacks? 

According to Kobi Micheal, a researcher from the Tel-Aviv based Institute for National Security Studies, “Hostages cannot be first priority. With all the sorrow… Israel will (address the) hostage issue only (when it has) the upper hand and when Hamas (is) defeated… not a second before.”

Reuters has also said Qatari mediators are negotiating the hostages’ release in exchange for 36 Palestinian women and children being held in Israeli prisons. Qatar’s Foreign Ministry confirmed to Reuters it is involved and sources told the news agency talks are “moving positively”.

There are contradictory reports, though; Hamas sources in Qatar told AFP there is “currently no chance for negotiation on the issue of prisoners or anything else”.

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On Monday Mr Netanyahu declared war on Hamas and said, “Hamas terrorists bound, burned and executed children. They are savages. Hamas is ISIS…” Israel Defence Minister, Yoav Gallant, on Monday ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza; “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas…”

The Gaza Strip – 365 sq km large and home to 2.3 million people – is already one of the world’s most locked-down places. It is also the third most densely populated space in the world.

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Over 1,600 people have died, more than 6,000 have been injured since the war began on Saturday. Fifteen deaths have also been reported from the West Bank, where Palestinians clashed with Israeli forces. The United Nations has said over 1.3 lakh have been displaced so far.

With input from agencies