The remaining hostages are being held by armed groups other than Hamas, complicating a new truce
The Wall Street Journal
Israeli officials say they believe many of the women and children still being held hostage in Gaza are not being held by Hamas, which could complicate efforts to revive a truce in the Palestinian enclave as the Israeli military expands its attacks.
Israeli shelling of the southern Gaza Strip intensified over the weekend after a seven-day pause in fighting collapsed, as raids on a crowded residential area in the north on Saturday killed a large number of people, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled territory. Residents of the South said that Israeli tanks there Advanced westwards.
The armed wing of Hamas said that it had targeted Israeli forces in several locations with rocket-propelled grenades and improvised explosive devices, adding that it had killed several soldiers. Palestinian militants have also fired hundreds of rockets into Israel.
Senior Egyptian officials said the week-long truce brokered by Qatar and Egypt collapsed in part because Hamas insisted it no longer had any female and child civilian hostages to release. The initial talks did not cover the Israeli female soldiers detained in Gaza.
The terms of the deal specified that Hamas would first release all civilian women and children while Israel suspended its attacks for up to 10 days and allowed more humanitarian aid into Gaza, which has been almost completely blockaded by Israel since the beginning of the war. A total of 110 hostages were released, including 86 Israeli citizens. Israel has indicated that it will extend the truce if Hamas releases the remaining 17 women and children in captivity. Israel says there are currently 137 hostages still being held in Gaza.
Israeli officials said on Sunday that their latest intelligence assessment is that at least three civilian hostages out of a total of 15 are still in Gaza and two children are being held by armed factions on the side of Hamas.
Among the women are Eden Zak Zakaria, 28, who was kidnapped from an outdoor music festival, and Israeli-German citizen Erbil Yehud, also 28, who is believed to be being held by Islamic Jihad. Israeli-Argentine citizen Sheri Bibas, 33, and her two sons, Ariel, 4, and kafir, 10 months, were kidnapped by Hamas and later handed over to another faction, officials said. Hamas said last week that beibas and her sons were dead, which Israel has not confirmed.
Hamas told Egyptian negotiators that some of the women on a list compiled by Israeli officials were being held by other groups resisting pressure to extradite them because they were considered too valuable. Hamas told negotiators that it was struggling to locate other people on the list, according to Egyptian officials.
Last week, a senior Israeli official said that Israel knows that Islamic Jihad and other Palestinian factions took their hostages on October 7 but does not consider this an obstacle to Hamas releasing all civilian women and children held hostage.
"We know that everything that Sinwar specifies, happens,"said the official in charge of Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza. "If he wants to take [hostages] from the hands of other factions and make sure that the agreement is fully implemented, it is not a big problem for him."
As hostage negotiations continued, residents said Israeli tanks advanced in some areas of Khan Yunis and Deir Balah, both in southern Gaza, blocking an inland road and requiring fleeing civilians to use a coastal road.
Israel has also stepped up its bombing of Gaza despite calls by U.S. officials to change the conduct of the war to reduce civilian casualties.
A spokesman for the enclave's Civil Defense Unit said in a video recorded on the site that the entire city block in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City was destroyed by several Israeli airstrikes on Saturday. He said that more than 50 houses were destroyed in the area where residents and displaced people from other areas live.
Ashraf al-Qadra, a spokesman for Gaza's health authorities, said health officials had counted at least 200 dead after the strikes and 300 wounded, which could make it one of the bloodiest attacks in the eight-week-old war.
Al-Qadra said Sunday morning that the Shejaiya bombing brought the death toll across the Gaza Strip in the previous 24 hours to 500. The Hamas-run Government Information Office estimated that about 200 others were buried under the rubble.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed more than 15,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, according to the health authorities there. The number does not distinguish between civilians and combatants.
