There are 59 hostages still held in the Gaza Strip by Hamas and other groups active in the Palestinian enclave. It is believed that only 24 are alive, as reported by Israeli media. For all of them, the mobilization of their relatives, who accuse Benjamin Netanyahu’s government of having “abandoned” them after the new Israeli air raids that hit the Palestinian enclave, which fell into the hands of Hamas in 2007, during the night, is back in force.
This morning, a Hamas exponent quoted by Al-Alaby Al-Jadeed spoke of the killing of one of the hostages and the wounding of others in the new raids after the Strip had been the scene of operations by the Israeli military for months in response to the attack on 7 October 2023 in Israel when 251 people were taken hostage. On 19 January, the agreement for a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Hamas came into force, with the first phase concluding after 42 days. And in the last few hours Netanyahu has given orders to attack Gaza, accusing Hamas of having “repeatedly refused to release” the hostages and of having rejected “the proposals it received from US President’s envoy Steve Witkoff and the mediators”.