2024-01-12T18:27:54+00:00
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/ The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced on Friday that Israel had reached an arrangement with Qatar that would allow the delivery of medicines to hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.
Netanyahu’s office said that medicines would be provided to the hostages “in the next few days.”
Israel says that Hamas militants who penetrated from Gaza into southern Israel on October 7 took 240 hostages of all ages, and 130 of them are still in the Palestinian Strip, which is bombed by Israeli forces daily.
The return of hostages is among the goals declared by Israel in the war on Gaza, and it is also an influential issue throughout Israeli society.
Pictures of hostages appear on walls, bus stops and storefronts across Israel.
Many elderly female hostages were released in a deal in which Israel released dozens of Palestinian prisoners and was brokered by Qatar.
There are still elderly people among the 132 hostages still in Gaza, 25 of whom Israeli officials say have died.
Hamas said that some of them were killed in the bombing of Gaza, and at the beginning of the war it threatened to execute the hostages itself.