The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) this evening released photographs of the messages three hostages killed by mistake wrote on a building in the Shejaiah neighborhood of Gaza City.
The hostages were killed by the soldiers, believing them to be a threat even though they were carrying a white flag and were unarmed.
The General Secretary of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), Hussein al-Sheikh, said today that the war in Gaza after the attack on southern Israel on October 7 means that Hamas must "seriously evaluate and review all its policies and all its methods" when the conflict subsides.
"It is unacceptable for someone to believe that his method and approach in conducting the conflict with Israel was ideal and the best. After all those (murders) and everything that is happening, isn't it worth making a serious, honest and responsible assessment to protect our people and our the Palestinian cause?” Al-Sheikh said.
Al-Sheikh is seen as a potential successor to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
He is the first senior PLO official to speak publicly about Hamas tactics since the October 7 attack. Hamas is not a member of the PLO.
Al-Sheikh met with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Ramallah on Friday.
The Palestinians told Sullivan that a new international effort is needed to persuade Israel of a comprehensive solution that includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
"There must be one Palestinian government that governs the Palestinian homeland," Al-Sheikh told Reuters, according to Israeli media.
(BETA)
Two Egyptian security sources said today that Israel and Hamas are open to renewing the ceasefire and freeing the hostages, although disagreements remain over how it will be implemented, Reuters reports.
Egypt and Qatar, which had previously negotiated a week-long ceasefire and the release of hostages, insisted on speeding up aid and the opening of the Kerem Shalom crossing before talks could begin, the sources said.
While the crossing was open, they said the aid was delayed due to inspections and had not yet entered Egypt.
Hopes for peace rose on Saturday when a source said Israel's intelligence chief had spoken with the Qatari prime minister on Friday.
Hamas is insisting on a list of hostages to be released unilaterally and demanding that Israeli forces withdraw behind predetermined lines, the sources told Reuters.
While Israel agreed for Hamas to post the list, the sources said it demanded a timeline and to see the list before determining the time and duration of the ceasefire.
The brother of one of the three hostages killed by Israeli soldiers, believing them to be a threat, accused those who "abandoned" him of also "killing" him at his funeral today.
"You did everything right," said Ido Shamriz, speaking of brother Alon, 26, at his funeral in Kibbutz Shefayim, north of Tel Aviv.
Alon Shamriz was kidnapped on October 7 and killed along with two other Israeli hostages as they shouted for help in Hebrew, carrying a white flag and unarmed, with no shirts to show for it, fearing the soldiers would think they were members of Hamas.
Since the admission that the three hostages were mistakenly killed on Friday in Gaza City, the pressure of the families of the abductees calling for the renewal of negotiations with Hamas has not weakened.
Hundreds of people demonstrated in front of Israel's defense ministry in Tel Aviv on Saturday night, demanding the return of their family members.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said late last night that his heart was "broken" but that he wanted to "maintain military pressure," and Hamas made a cease-fire a precondition for any deal.
The army expressed its regret for the "tragic event" that took place in the Gaza Strip area where the soldiers faced "great pressure, intense fighting and many traps".
Despite this, it was said that "service rules were violated" and that an investigation is ongoing.
About 240 people were taken to the Gaza Strip during the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel.
In those attacks, 1.140 people were killed, mostly women, according to the latest figures from the Israeli authorities.
Another 129 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Israel announced after the attack that it would "destroy Hamas" which rules Gaza.
About 18.800 Palestinians, mostly women, children and minors, died in the Israeli bombardment and subsequent ground offensive, according to the Ministry of Health there.
(BETA)
Israeli forces fighting Hamas said they discovered an unusually large concrete and iron-belted tunnel designed to transport vehicles of militant fighters from Gaza to the border, reports Reuters.
Destroying or disabling hundreds of kilometers of underground passages and bunkers is one of the goals of Israel's offensive launched after Hamas gunmen launched a killing and kidnapping spree in its southern cities and military bases on October 7.
Among the locations that Hamas captured in that attack was the Erez border crossing between Gaza and Israel.
Just 100 meters south of the checkpoint, hidden in a sand dune, the army showed reporters the exit point of what it said was a flagship project of Hamas.
The tunnel descended diagonally to a depth of 50 meters, where it expanded to a relatively spacious three meters in height and width, with an electrical connection.
Chief military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said the entire length of the tunnel is four kilometers - enough to reach northern Gaza City, once the heart of Hamas rule and now a devastated battle zone.
"It was the biggest tunnel we found in Gaza... intended to target the (Erez) crossing," Hagari said, without specifying whether Hamas had used it for the Oct. 7 attack.
"Millions of dollars were invested in this tunnel. It took years to build this tunnel... Vehicles could go through it," he said.
Hamas did not respond to a Reuters request for comment on the Israeli allegation.
In general, the tunnels that the group, or the Israeli military, showed to the media after their discovery were narrow and low - designed for the movement of gunmen on foot.
The tunnel he showed Hagari had shafts that plunged vertically down, which he said suggested it was part of a wider network.
The tunnels have been a challenge for Israeli engineers, worried that the networks could conceal hostages held by Hamas. This slowed the offensive, whose large number of Palestinian civilians alarmed world powers.
Hagari showed reporters a video of Mohammed Sinwar, the brother of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and himself a senior operative in the group, sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle he said was driving inside the tunnel.
Israeli news website Inet reported on October 29 that soldiers killed several gunmen who attacked Erez after entering the area through a tunnel. Hagari's office did not respond to an inquiry as to whether this referred to the tunnel he showed.
The head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, again suggested today that Israel is using "terrorism" tactics in Gaza, lamenting reports of the killing of two Christian women who took refuge in a church compound by the Israeli army, reports Reuters.
At his Sunday blessing, Francis referred to a statement from the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, the Catholic authority in the Holy Land, about Saturday's incident.
The patriarchate said an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) "sniper" killed two women, whom the pope named Nahida Kalil Anton and her daughter Samar, as they walked to a nunnery within the Holy Family parish. In a statement from the Patriarchate, it is stated that seven more people were shot and wounded while trying to protect others.
Telecommunications services are gradually being restored in the central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip, the telecommunications companies Paltel and Javal announced today, Reuters reports.
"Our field teams managed to arrive and repair the main damaged place after numerous attempts in the past few days with the help of relevant international bodies," the joint statement of the two companies states.
Communication and Internet services in Gaza have been down since December 14.
French Foreign Minister Catherine Colonna today called on Israel for a new immediate and permanent break in the Gaza Strip and said that she is "concerned" about the situation with the Palestinians and the Israeli hostages after more than two months of war.
"Too many civilians have been killed," Colona said after a meeting with her Israeli counterpart, Eli Cohen, in Tel Aviv.
The head of French diplomacy pointed out that the first one-week truce, which ended on December 1, allowed the release of 105 of the 250 hostages that Hamas took to Gaza after the attack on Israel on October 7.
During the cease-fire, the delivery of aid to civilians in Gaza could be increased and the evacuation of the wounded allowed.
"We know it's not enough," she said.
She reminded that three Frenchmen are detained, missing or are hostages in the Gaza Strip and that France spares no effort to free them.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said any call for a ceasefire was a "mistake" and a "gift to Hamas", the Islamist movement in power in Gaza, whose members carried out the massacre in Israel on October 7.
Those attacks killed about 1.140 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, according to Israeli authorities. In retaliation, the Israeli army immediately launched a military offensive on Gaza, in which more than 18.800 people died, according to the latest balance sheet of the Ministry of Health in that Palestinian territory, which has been under the control of Hamas since 2007.
Eli Cohen estimated that France could play an important role in preventing a war with Hezbollah, the Lebanese Shiite movement and an ally of Hamas that is increasing its attacks on Israel from southern Lebanon.
French Minister Colonna is due to go to Lebanon tomorrow where she will meet with that country's officials and the command of UN forces in Lebanon, but calls for "de-escalation" apply to all parties, including Israel, she said.
She also said that the attacks carried out in the Red Sea by the Houthis, rebels from Yemen, in support of Hamas, cannot go unanswered, and added that France and its partners are considering several options to prevent the recurrence of such attacks.
In a meeting with the families of the dead French, she pointed out that France "will not forget" the people who were "killed with absolute brutality" on October 7, including 41 compatriots, and specifically referred to the crimes whose victims were women.
"Any denial and relativization of these sexual crimes is unacceptable and, above all, unworthy. It is an insult to human consciousness," she said. "The facts are real, the facts speak. You need to have courage and look them in the face as barbarism that no one can ever justify," she added.
She met with experts gathering evidence of violence and sexual crimes committed by Hamas attackers, as well as officials from the Association for the Defense of Women Victims.
The convoy will also speak with Palestinian officials in Ramallah, the seat of the Palestinian Authority. Today, the authorities announced that five Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on the occupied West Bank.
She will also meet with the Bedouins who were expelled by Israeli settlers, to reiterate that France wants sanctions against the extremists responsible for such actions.
(BETA)
The head of British diplomacy, David Cameron, and his German counterpart, Analena Berbock, assessed today that the introduction of a "permanent truce" in the Gaza Strip is of urgent importance, but that they are not in favor of a general truce being introduced immediately.
"We need to do everything we can to pave the way for a lasting ceasefire leading to lasting peace. The sooner the better, it is urgently needed," the two ministers wrote in a joint article published today in the Sunday Times.
It added that "too many civilians were killed".
Cameron's tone in the article shows a shift from that used by the British government, but does not go so far as to call for an immediate ceasefire, writes the British public service BBC.
"We do not believe that calling for a general and urgent ceasefire right now, in the hope that it will somehow become permanent, is the way to move forward," the article reads.
This, according to the two ministers, would mean ignoring why Israel is forced to fight, which is that Hamas attacked Israel in a barbaric way and continues to fire rockets to kill Israeli citizens. They added that Hamas "should lay down its arms."
Cameron and Berbock wrote that they support a ceasefire only if it is sustainable in the long term.
"Our goal cannot just be to end the fighting today. It must be a peace that lasts for days, years, generations," the article states.
"We therefore support a ceasefire, but only if it is sustainable," they wrote.
On Tuesday, Great Britain and Germany abstained from voting in the UN General Assembly on a resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution was supported by 153 countries.
Britain and Germany are pushing for further humanitarian breaks so more aid can be delivered to Gaza and more hostages held by Hamas can be freed.
British Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden called on Israel for "restraint" in an interview today with the British public service BBC.
"For the truce to be sustainable we must ensure that the threat of Hamas from Israel is removed," Dowden said today and added that this is why Britain continues to support Israel and its right to self-defense, to remove the threat from Hamas, and at the same time to return the hostages .
Dowden also said that Israel is facing a "very difficult situation".
"If you attack an enemy who is literally hiding under hospitals in the middle of a civilian population it will cause a large number of civilian casualties. What we are saying as the British government is that Israel needs to show restraint," Dowden said.
In recent days, the US administration has stepped up pressure on the Israeli authorities to get them to move to a less intense phase in their offensive to better protect civilians.
(BETA)
The Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza was opened on Sunday for aid trucks for the first time since the war broke out, a spokesman from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said, according to Reuters.
The crossing has been closed to aid trucks since Hamas militants attacked Israeli southern communities on October 7. Israel agreed last Sunday to reopen the crossing for aid trucks.
Two more Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said.
The army said 121 soldiers had been killed since Israel launched a ground offensive in Gaza on October 27, Reuters writes.
At least five Palestinians were killed Sunday in an Israeli attack on Tulkarm in the occupied West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said, as reported by Reuters.
Israeli forces killed two on Sunday, the ministry said. Another Palestinian also died on Sunday from injuries sustained following an Israeli attack on the West Bank city of Jenin several days ago, the ministry said.
Israel's military says it has stepped up operations against Palestinian militant groups in the West Bank. Israel confirmed on Thursday that it had killed "more than 10" people it called terrorists in raids in Jenin, where several militant groups are present.
Conflict between Israel and Hamas - 72th day.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said it participated in a joint United Nations mission to deliver medical supplies and assess the situation at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The team delivered drugs and surgical supplies, orthopedic surgery equipment, anesthesia materials and drugs to the hospital, which is "currently minimally functional," the WHO said, according to Reuters.
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