The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately confirmed having received, via the mediators, a “list of hostages” who could be released without further details.
A respected truce
The first phase of the current truce, which is to last six weeks and began on Sunday, should allow the release of 33 hostages against some 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. Three young women having already been released last weekend, in exchange for the release of 90 Palestinians from prison, there will then remain 26 hostages available for release in this first phase. The names were communicated but without chronological order of release.
The truce has generally been respected since Sunday, apart from a few incidents. According to the agreement, after the release of the four new hostages, those displaced “in the south of the Gaza Strip will begin to return to the north,” said the Hamas official. “An Egyptian-Qatari committee will oversee the implementation of the agreement on the ground.”
“The deal should hold, but if it doesn’t, there will be a lot of problems,” US President Donald Trump warned reporters on Thursday.
The withdrawal of troops from Lebanon will continue
But Netanyahu said the withdrawal of his troops from southern Lebanon “would continue” beyond the 60 days provided for in the ceasefire agreement signed with Beirut at the end of November to end two months of open war. with Hezbollah., or this Sunday. As the planned arrangements “have not been fully accomplished by Lebanon, the phased withdrawal process will continue in agreement with the United States,” his office said.
-One of the clauses stipulated that “the Lebanese army is deploying in southern Lebanon” and imposes “the withdrawal of Hezbollah beyond the [fleuve] Litani,” he added in a statement. Believing that this is not the case, Israel will “achieve the objectives of the war” to allow its residents displaced from the border area to return “in safety”.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun demanded on Saturday that this Israeli withdrawal be done “within the set deadlines”. He also denounced “the continuation of Israeli violations”, deploring “the dynamiting of houses and the destruction of border villages”.
West Bank Operation
The Lebanese authorities did not initially react to Israel’s announcement. In a statement, Hezbollah for its part affirmed on Thursday that failure to respect the Sunday deadline would constitute “a flagrant violation of the agreement and a new attack on Lebanese sovereignty”.
At the same time, Israeli soldiers continued an operation called “Iron Wall” in Jenin, one of the bastions of Palestinian resistance, on Friday in the occupied West Bank for the fourth consecutive day. Hundreds of Palestinians left the vast refugee camp in this town in the north of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 on Thursday.
