In a surprise announcement close to midnight on Wednesday, a top aide to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the highly anticipated release of the first group of 50 Israeli abductees held by Hamas in Gaza as part of a hostage deal would not take place on Thursday, as previously announced, but only Friday.
National Security Council chairman Tzachi Hanegbi circulated a statement that said the negotiations for the hostages “are constantly progressing” and “the release will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, and not before Friday.”
An Israeli source also said the four-day lull in fighting, per the deal, would be on hold and that Israeli military operations in Gaza would continue as long as the agreement is not finalized, Haaretz reported.
The delay is a blow to families who are desperate to see their abducted children, spouses, daughters, and sisters return after close to 50 days as Hamas hostages.
The deal set to unfold, as detailed by Israel’s cabinet, would trade 50 living Israeli hostages — children, their mothers, and other women in groups of 12-13 people — for a four-day lull in fighting and the release of up to 150 Palestinian female and underage prisoners. It would also enable an influx of fuel and humanitarian supplies to Gaza during the pause, a first since Hamas initiated war nearly seven weeks ago when its terror members rampaged through southern Israel on October 7 and massacred some 1,200 people, most of them civilians.
The official also said that, contrary to an earlier report on Channel 12, which claimed that Mossad chief David Barnea received a list of the first batch of hostages slated for release, he does not believe one has been received yet either.
Israel will not be publishing the names ahead of their release to avoid any false hope among the families if the agreement falls through.
According to multiple reports, Barnea had the list in-hand Wednesday. He was in Doha with Gen. Nitzan Alon, who has held the hostage file for the Israel Defense Forces, and the two reportedly met with Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani to discuss the final details of the deal.
An unsourced Channel 12 report late Wednesday said the delay was due to a lack of mutual understandings on the “rules of the game” during the lull in fighting over the four-day truce agreement.
Hanegbi’s surprise announcement Wednesday night came hours after a senior Israeli official said the release of some 50 Israeli hostages would begin Thursday and confirmed details of the Hamas deal in a Wednesday evening briefing with reporters.
The briefing followed an announcement by senior Hamas official Moussa Abu Marzouk who said the deal would go into effect at 10 a.m. on Thursday.
In the press briefing to reporters earlier Wednesday, the senior Israeli source said Jerusalem believes Hamas’s main interest in the negotiations was to maximize the duration of the pause in hostilities, and that fuel and humanitarian aid are not Hamas’s central concern.
Initially, the official said, Hamas wanted a month-long halt in the fighting, but reduced its demands to four days. Nonetheless, the official added, extending the pause beyond four days is a central goal of Hamas.
Since Hamas would like to extend the pause by a few more days, there is a chance that a total of 80 kidnapped children and women directly held by the terror group will be released under the provisions of the deal, the official said.
Hamas has said it is holding 210 hostages of the 240 abducted from Israel on October 7, with Islamic Jihad and other factions holding about 30. Hamas has conveyed that it needs time to locate the hostages that are not held by the group.
A US official told reporters on Tuesday that Hamas produced a list with identifying information about the 50 women and children it plans to release over the coming days.
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