Applause and cries of joy on the beach in Tel Aviv. The news that has just fallen is good at the start of Saturday afternoon. One of the lifeguards shares it live with beachgoers. The speakers crackle: “The Israeli army released four hostages: Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv and Noa Argamani. » When this last name was announced, the cheers grew louder. Captured at the Nova festival and transported to Gaza on the back of a motorcycle, Noa is one of the best-known Israeli captives.
Transferred to Sheba Hospital in Tel HaShomer by helicopter, the captives are in good health. Collective sigh of relief in Israel, where the subject of hostages is a gaping wound that constantly revives the trauma of the October 7 massacres. In the afternoon, the details of an operation which required “long months of preparation”according to Daniel Hagari, the spokesperson for the Israeli army, are becoming clearer.
Hundreds of Palestinian victims
At 11 a.m. Saturday, officers from the elite Yamam and Shin Bet units were ordered to attack two multi-story buildings in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, where intelligence had established that the hostages were being held. Their release was met with resistance from Hamas. An exchange of fire in one of the buildings kills an officer from a special Israeli police unit. Further away, a commando vehicle is immobilized by gunfire. Bombings allowed their evacuation.
Hind Khoudary, a Gazan journalist present on Saturday at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, 6 kilometers away, reported “intense bombardments from the morning”citing “artillery fire, bullets and airstrikes”before reporting on Al-Jazeera live around 10:30 a.m. that the hospital was “overwhelmed” : “People are on the ground. There are many seriously injured people. Everyone is terrified. » At least 94 dead, including children, and more than a hundred injured were taken to hospital, according to a hospital spokesperson, cited by the AP. The Hamas Ministry of Health, for its part, puts forward the figure of 274 dead and 698 injured.
Military success for Netanyahu
In the evening, no Israeli channel, in the special editions, mentions the Palestinian victims. Attention is focused on the reunion of the hostages with their families, the tribute to the soldiers, in particular to the killed officer, Arnon Zmora, whose name the operation now bears, and on the details of the raid, compared to the rescue from Entebbe in 1976.
This is the third time in 246 days of war that the army has managed to free live hostages by force, bringing their number to seven. Although the human cost is enormous, the operation is acclaimed by Israeli public opinion and offers Benyamin Netanyahu a military success synonymous with political respite from the impasse into which the war is sinking.
Frustrated by the lack of political objectives in the management of the war, Benny Gantz, minister member of the war cabinet, threatened to resign on June 8. His press conference, canceled in the wake of the events, was rescheduled for Sunday at 8 p.m. “The challenges facing Israel remain,” he declared in a press release on Saturday, after the Prime Minister ordered him not to leave the government. If his departure is a blow to the unity of the emergency coalition, it should not impact the majority in the Assembly.
Another 120 hostages in the hands of Hamas
The Israeli street gathered in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to press the government to sign an agreement. “There are 120 hostages still waiting to return home, said Omri Shtivi, brother of Idan, kidnapped during the Nova festival, in front of the crowd gathered on the hostages square in Tel Aviv. We must not deceive ourselves. Military operations will not bring them all back alive. Only an agreement will allow them to be released. »
Since Joe Biden’s speech on May 31 proposing a plan for a ceasefire, the international community has been pressing Hamas to accept the terms of yet another version of an agreement negotiated since January. Without success to date.
——————-
Resumption of American humanitarian aid to Gaza
Saturday evening, June 8, the American army announced that it had resumed the delivery of humanitarian aid to the Gazan population, from the temporary pier built by the United States on the Gaza coast and damaged by a storm. at the end of May.
The US Middle East Military Command (Centcom) announced the delivery of 492 tonnes of humanitarian aid on Saturday.
According to the United Nations, almost all of the 2.4 million residents of the Gaza Strip displaced by fighting and bombings are food insecure, with the risk of large-scale famine.
