Hamas rejects ceasefire until Israel withdraws from Gaza

January 21

• Israeli hostages |

  Israeli hostages at risk from deadly fungus with ‘no treatment’ in Hamas tunnel network

  A mysterious deadly fungus in the Hamas tunnel network poses a new threat to the 136 hostages being held in Gaza, Israeli officials have claimed.

  A member of the hostage team in Israel, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “There is a deadly fungus in the tunnels with no treatment.”

  “Hamas members there are now more immune to it but there is a high chance many of the hostages are sick and deteriorating due to this fungus,” the official said.

  Dr Hagai Levine, head of the medical team for the hostage families forum, said testimonies of those released confirmed the fears of medical officials.

January 23

Israeli soldiers guard the border with the Gaza Strip CREDIT: AMIR LEVY/GETTY

Israel is reeling from the tragic deaths of 21 reservists – could the disaster have been avoided? By Nataliya Vasilyeva IN JERUSALEM When Benjamin Netanyahu launched a ground offensive in Gaza three months ago in response to the devastating Hamas attack last October, the public knew well that more Israeli lives would be lost. But the death on Monday of 21 IDF reservists in Gaza just a few hundred feet from the Israeli border, the army’s single largest loss of life in all of the four months of the war, has raised questions that another deadly, non-combat incident that could have been averted. The IDF on Tuesday said it was still investigating the disaster. But early reports suggested that the reservists died because the buildings they were in had been rigged with explosives ahead of a planned demolition and had detonated prematurely when a nearby tank was targeted with an RPG. The deaths triggered an outpouring of grief but also raised questions about the military’s tactics in Gaza and the increasingly apparent need to rotate out the troops, who are exhausted after nearly four months of war. The Israeli military has now lost over 200 soldiers in the ground operation and mass casualty events like this have been rare. But Monday’s tragedy was the second deadly incident to befall Israeli troops in recent weeks. In early January, the IDF had to admit that six soldiers were killed as a result of another mishap. when a lorry load of explosives detonated in central Gaza’s Bureij. A preliminary investigation found that the blast had been caused when an IDF tank fired at what it believed to be a target nearby but missed. The tank round struck an electricity pylon, which fell on the lorry and set off the explosion.

Some of the Israeli soldiers who died in the blast in central Gaza CREDIT: IDF

Israel’s staunchly patriotic Walla website on Tuesday ran an article titled “10 tough questions” in a bid to understand if Monday’s loss of life could have been averted. Walla pointed to the Bureij incident, raising the question whether it would be safer to destroy buildings by calling in air strikes instead of carrying out controlled demolitions. Another issue is the army itself. Over 300,000 reservists answered the call-up in October, when Israel expected the military operation to last a few months at the most. Some of them have already been sent home, but others have been notified that they will be deployed until the end of February. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, on Tuesday said his country needed to “learn lessons” from Monday’s deadly incident. But with no end to the war in sight, whether the IDF troops will have the time or resources to address those issues remains to be seen.

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Hamas has reportedly rejected an Israeli proposal for a two-month ceasefire in Gaza in exchange for the release of all remaining hostages held by the terror group.

A senior unnamed Egyptian official told the Associated Press that Israel had proposed the pause in fighting to allow for the more than 130 captives to be freed, in return for the release of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.

Top Hamas leaders in Gaza would also be allowed to relocate to other countries under the plan, according to the official.

But Hamas rejected the proposal, insisting that no more hostages will be released until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws its forces from Gaza entirely, the official said.

Neither Israel nor Hamas have publicly commented on the ongoing negotiations.

 

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