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3. Israel Finds Nine Bodies in Rafah Tunnels as Mediators Discuss Safe Passage for Hamas Fighters

The Israeli army announced on Friday that it had recovered the bodies of nine Palestinian fighters recently killed during its operations to dismantle the tunnel network in the southern Gaza Strip.

During operations in the eastern sector of Rafah, soldiers “located nine additional terrorists who had been eliminated in the underground terrorist infrastructure,” the military said in a statement.

“To date, more than 30 terrorists attempting to flee through these tunnels have been eliminated” in the Rafah area, the army added.

The announcement comes as several sources familiar with the discussions told AFP on Thursday that negotiations are underway regarding the fate of dozens of fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas who have been trapped for several weeks in tunnels beneath the area of the Gaza Strip controlled by the Israeli army.

The day before, publicly acknowledging this situation for the first time – which had been revealed earlier this month by US envoy Steve Witkoff – Hamas had urged mediator countries to pressure Israel to allow its fighters to exit these tunnels safely.

Under the ceasefire brokered by the United States and in effect since October 10, the Israeli army has withdrawn inside the Gaza Strip beyond a “yellow line,” which still grants it control over more than 50% of the territory.

According to a source from one of the mediating countries, the United States, Qatar, Egypt, and Turkey are working on “a compromise that would allow Hamas fighters to leave the tunnels behind the Yellow Line near Rafah.”

“The current proposal would grant them safe passage to areas not controlled by Israel in order to ensure that this issue does not become a point of friction leading to new ceasefire violations or to its collapse,” the source said.

According to a Hamas official in Gaza, “between 60 and 80 fighters” are believed to be trapped underground in Rafah.

Asked in early November, a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told AFP that he was not willing to issue them safe passage.

The truce – reached more than two years after the war triggered by Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel – remains extremely fragile, with both sides accusing each other daily of violating it, while the Gaza Strip, devastated by the Israeli military campaign, remains mired in a severe humanitarian crisis.

AFP