Israel and Hamas are due to carry out their third exchange of hostages for prisoners on Thursday, with the release of eight hostages, three Israelis and five Thais, held in the Gaza Strip, as part of the fragile ceasefire intended to put an end to 15 months of war.
A fourth exchange is scheduled for Saturday, with the release of three hostages, according to the timetable announced by Israel on Wednesday.
But the Palestinian Islamist movement has warned that the forthcoming releases could be compromised, accusing Israel of delaying the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza under the truce agreement. Israel denied this.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office announced that it had received from Hamas the list of hostages whose release is expected on Thursday, and three men, all alive, who will be released on Saturday.
Two Israeli women, Agam Berger, 20, captured on 7 October 2023 while doing her military service near the Gaza Strip, and a 29-year-old civilian, Arbel Yehud, taken hostage on Kibbutz Nir Oz with the family of her fiancé, as well as an 80-year-old German-Israeli man, Gadi Moses, are due to be released on Thursday.
Five Thais will also be released.
The time of their release is not known.
They will be exchanged for 110 Palestinians held by Israel, including 32 sentenced to life imprisonment, according to a Palestinian NGO. The freed prisoners, 20 of whom will be exiled, are due to arrive in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, at around midday (10:00 GMT).
The family of Gadi Moses, a farmer who lost his girlfriend in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, expressed their ‘emotion’ on Wednesday in a statement in which they thanked ‘the Israeli people for their support’.
Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, had broadcast a video of Arbel Yehud on Monday.
In it, the young woman, wearing a hooded sweatshirt, clearly appeared to be very distressed. She gave her identity, the date of Saturday 25 January and asked the head of the government and US President Donald Trump to do everything possible to free the hostages.
Seven Israeli women have already been freed, against 290 Palestinians, on 19 January, the first day of the truce, and again on 25 January.
The ceasefire agreement provides for the release of 33 hostages in exchange for around 1,900 Palestinians during an initial six-week phase, but the Israeli authorities have warned that this first group includes eight dead hostages.
The ceasefire has allowed an influx of international aid into the territory besieged by Israel, where the needs are immense.
On Wednesday, however, Hamas officials accused Israel of delaying the entry of aid, including ‘fuel, tents, caravans and heavy machinery’, and warned that this could ‘affect the normal implementation of the agreement, including prisoner exchanges’.
Contacted by AFP, Cogat, the Israeli Ministry of Defence body responsible for civil affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, denounced this as ‘fake news’.
According to Cogat, ‘3,000 trucks entered Gaza’ between 26 January and mid-day on Wednesday.
While almost all of the territory's 2.4 million inhabitants have been displaced by the war, hundreds of thousands of them have begun to return to the north since Monday, walking for miles through the ruins.
Mohammed Al-Faleh, a 33-year-old displaced person, tells of finding his house destroyed. To shelter his family, he hastily built two walls from the rubble.
‘There's no cement, so I used mud. There's no metal sheeting, so we're going to make a nylon roof’, he explained.
During this first phase of the truce, the details of the second phase, aimed at freeing the last hostages and bringing the war to a definitive end, are due to be discussed.
If the timetable goes according to plan, the final stage will involve the reconstruction of Gaza and the return of the bodies of the last dead hostages.
Donald Trump, who will receive Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on 4 February, has attracted a volley of criticism in recent days after proposing a plan to ‘clean up’ Gaza by expelling its inhabitants to Jordan and Egypt.
The war in Gaza was triggered by the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023, which resulted in the deaths of 1,210 people on the Israeli side, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people kidnapped, 87 are still being held hostage, of whom at least 34 have died, according to the Israeli army.
The offensive launched in retaliation by Israel in the Gaza Strip has claimed at least 47,317 lives, most of them civilians, according to data from the Hamas government's Ministry of Health, which the UN considers reliable.
With AFP.
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