2023-12-03 07:31:58
“We will do everything to bring hostages home and destroy Hamas.” Israel’s objectives do not change, according to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The war in the Gaza Strip has resumed, Hamas has reported the deaths of hundreds of people due to the raids. In a context of very high tension, the negotiations to resume the process of freeing the hostages have come to a halt. Netanyahu, however, has not changed his line: on the agenda, the return home of the people kidnapped on October 7 is a priority as is the elimination of Hamas.
“We will do everything in our power to bring them home, we will do everything we can to bring them all home,” he reiterated, but also “to destroy Hamas and to make sure that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” he said, confirming that so far 110 people have been freed, including 86 Israeli civilians who were held hostage in Gaza.
“Today they are with us – he said -. But our mission cannot yet be said to be accomplished”. Netanyahu’s words came after hostage negotiations broke down as the Israelis continued to push for the release of a group of women, met with refusal from Hamas.
“We will continue with the war until we achieve all the objectives,” Netanyahu underlined during the press conference less than 48 hours after the end of the pause in hostilities between Israel and Hamas. “The ground operation was necessary,” the Israeli prime minister said, referring to the first phase of the conflict, before the truce that came into force on November 24 and ended on Friday morning. “Now the ground operation is necessary to continue obtaining results – he insisted – There is no other way to win than by carrying out the ground operation”. The Israeli government, after the October 7 attack, indicated as its objectives the release of all the hostages held in the Gaza Strip and the “elimination of Hamas” which took control of the Palestinian enclave in 2007. “We have resumed the fighting” and “this pressure will continue to increase”, the Israeli prime minister stated, underlining that the fighting against Hamas “will continue until victory”.
Netanyahu also reportedly proposed holding a joint press conference with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who declined the offer. According to Gallant’s office – the minister in turn released a statement to the media – on some occasions the meetings with the press take place together, on others separately.
Gallant: “Hamas refused to release 15 women and 2 minors”
Yesterday evening Gallant declared that he had ordered the restart of Israeli operations in the Gaza Strip on Friday morning after Hamas said ‘no’ to the release of 15 women and two minors as part of the agreement for the pause in hostilities. The Israeli military “went back to fighting with maximum intensity,” Gallant said, accusing Hamas of violating the pact. “We are continuing exactly where we left off,” he added, during a press conference, where he declared that “thousands of terrorists have been eliminated” and “hundreds” have been “captured” and “are being interrogated in Israel.” . Gallant also claimed the release of “110 hostages who returned alive.”
CNN had also reported that negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the hostages held prisoner in the Gaza Strip would have been interrupted due to Hamas’s refusal to release some women. The organization pushed to begin negotiations regarding the release of men held captive, probably on different conditions, while Israel continued to insist on the release of all women before other hostages.
Hamas reports “300 dead in Gaza City”
There would have been 300 deaths in Israeli attacks in the Shejaiyeh area, in the eastern part of Gaza City according to the Israeli newspaper Time which is based on complaints spread by Hamas: Israel would have bombed over 50 buildings in the neighborhood after the end of the pause in hostilities. More than 100 people died in an Israeli raid that targeted a house housing families and displaced people in the Jabalia camp in the northern Gaza Strip according to al-Jazeera.
The Times of Israel wrote of “extensive land battles” around the town of Khan Younis, in the southern part of the isolated area. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) reported that some Hamas leaders were in the area. Citing residents of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli newspaper added that the Israeli army dropped leaflets in Khan Younis urging residents to flee to Rafah in the south as the area was dangerous. IDF attacks were also reported in Rafah.
The IDF for its part announced that in the last day it attacked more than 400 targets in the Gaza Strip, many of them in the southern city of Khan Yunis. “The Israeli Navy operated in Khan Yunis and Deir al-Balah, in the southern Gaza Strip, and attacked “military targets of the Hamas organization, as well as infrastructure and equipment used by the organization’s naval force,” the statement read of the Israeli army.
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