Netanyahu offering hostages’ captors millions of dollars, safe passage from Gaza
Hamas had rejected a proposal for a short-term ceasefire and hostage release deal.
(THE TIMES OF ISRAEL) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to offer captors of hostages in Gaza “several million dollars” for the release of each hostage, an Israeli official confirmed on Tuesday, as Israel’s offensive in northern Gaza continued alongside efforts to meet the humanitarian needs of the enclave’s civilians.
The prime minister is prepared to guarantee “safe passage” out of Gaza for captors and their families who release hostages, the official said, responding to a Channel 12 report about the monetary reward.
The idea was discussed in Sunday’s meeting on the hostages with government point man Gal Hirsch. Some family members of captives also met with Hirsch on Sunday, according to the Prime Minister’s Office.
The official also confirmed the US State Department’s statement on Monday that Hamas had rejected a proposal for a short-term ceasefire and hostage release deal.
“Nothing is happening on the ground until we know the results of [Tuesday’s] US elections,” the official said.
The Egyptian proposal envisioned a 12-day ceasefire during which Hamas would agree to release four hostages and the sides would hold talks about a permanent ceasefire.
But Hamas made clear that it would only agree to a short-term deal that includes guarantees for a longer-term one, and the Egyptian proposal stopped short of such an assurance, given Israel’s refusal to agree.
Meanwhile, families of those held captive by the Hamas terror group were told the premier “doesn’t meet with hostage families,” according to a Channel 12 report.
The Prime Minister’s Office issued a statement Tuesday denying the report, stressing that Netanyahu “has been meeting the hostage families continuously since the outbreak of the war and considers this to be of great importance.”
The PMO stressed that all the families have met the prime minister, some more than once, citing the meeting with Hirsch.
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during its October 7 attack last year remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
As of Tuesday afternoon, the vast majority of the Palestinian civilian population that had been residing in northern Gaza’s Jabalia had evacuated, as the IDF pressed on with an offensive against Hamas in the area and other towns north of Gaza City.
The IDF said it has managed to move more than 55,000 civilians out of Jabalia after Hamas was allegedly forcing them to stay there to act as a human shield for its activities. Some 60,000 Palestinians were estimated to have been in Jabalia before the latest operation was launched last month.
The population has largely moved to Gaza City, with only a few dozen crossing the IDF’s Netzarim Corridor and heading to the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone in the Strip’s south.
According to the IDF, it has evidence and testimonies that Hamas shot, beat and in some cases executed civilians trying to evacuate the Jabalia area.
The IDF said it was seeking to clear the town of civilians to enable a cleaner operation against terror operatives, without risking the lives of innocents, while Hamas attempts to hide behind the population.
Senior officers have continued to deny that the army is carrying out the so-called “generals’ plan” to lay siege to northern Gaza, promoted by a group of senior IDF retirees. Under the plan, northern Gaza would become a military zone where everyone is a target, and no supplies would enter the territory.
On the ground, dozens of aid trucks are entering northern Gaza each day via the two Erez crossings, and the civilian population is being safely evacuated and not intentionally targeted, the IDF asserted on Tuesday.
The statement came a day after the US State Department said that Israel got a “fail” grade in terms of meeting the conditions for an improvement in aid deliveries, with just over a week until a deadline for Israel to meet certain requirements set by the US or risk potential restrictions on offensive military assistance.
The IDF also said Tuesday that it had captured 700 members of Hamas and other terror groups who surrendered to forces during the evacuation of civilians in Jabalia. Among those captured are dozens who participated in the October 7 onslaught, including the raid on the Erez Crossing, the military said. The detained terror operatives are providing the IDF with useful intelligence, it added.
As of Tuesday morning, more than 1,000 terror operatives had also been killed amid the fighting, according to the IDF.
The IDF’s latest estimate on Tuesday put the total number of people still in Jabalia at several hundred. Several thousand Palestinians also remain in Beit Lahiya, Beit Hanoun and other northern Gaza towns, where the military plans to operate against Hamas as part of the ongoing offensive.
A strike late Monday in Beit Lahiya hit a house where several displaced families were staying, killing at least 20 people, including eight women and six children, according to Hamas-affiliated health officials.
North Gaza’s towns, including Jabalia, are now disconnected from Gaza City amid the ongoing operation, which the IDF said is to prevent Hamas operatives from escaping or alternatively, from bringing in reinforcements from Gaza City, where thousands of terror operatives are thought to be stationed.
Amid the operation, the IDF said it had discovered over 200 homes that were booby-trapped with explosives. In two cases, the bombs were not discovered before troops entered the buildings, leading to casualties.
The operation marks the fourth push into Jabalia by the IDF since the start of the war a year ago. The military said it assesses that this operation will finally break Hamas’s forces in Jabalia, and it will no longer represent the terror group’s “most significant center of gravity” in northern Gaza.
Nineteen IDF soldiers and officers have been killed during the Jabalia operation so far, including the commander of the 401st Armored Brigade, Col. Ehsan Daqsa.
Early Tuesday, an Israeli strike hit a house in the Tufah neighborhood in Gaza City, killing two children and their parents, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. Two other children were wounded, it said.
In the central town of Zuweida, a strike hit a tent where a displaced family was sheltering, killing four people, including a mother and her two children, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.
Another strike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, killing two people, the hospital said. An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the hospital morgue.
The IDF said it targeted a weapons storage facility where a terror operative was located, and that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians.”
Meanwhile, more than 100 patients, including children suffering from trauma injuries and chronic diseases, were set to be evacuated from Gaza on Tuesday in a rare transfer out of the war-ravaged enclave, according to a World Health Organization official.
“These are ad hoc measures. What we have requested repeatedly is a sustained medevac [medical evacuation] outside of Gaza,” said Rik Peeperkorn, adding that 12,000 people were awaiting transfer.
The patients will travel in a large convoy via the Kerem Shalom Crossing with Israel before flying to the United Arab Emirates, he added, and then a portion will travel to Romania.
On Sunday, a water desalination plant in Gaza was also connected to Israel’s electricity grid, to increase the enclave’s supply of clean water.
The plant, located in the southern city of Khan Younis, is run by UNICEF and can provide 20,000 cubic meters of water daily to the nearby humanitarian zone where the vast majority of Gaza’s population is currently taking refuge from the conflict.
Israel’s security cabinet approved a decision in July to connect the desalination facility to the Israeli grid in July, but it has taken several months to complete the necessary work.
Israel supplied close to 50 percent of Gaza’s electricity before the current war, but cut off its electricity supply to Gaza on October 12 last year following the Hamas invasion and atrocities on October 7.
Separately, the US Army said Monday that an American soldier who suffered non-combat injuries while supporting the military’s pier off the coast of Gaza earlier this year had died.
Sergeant Quandarius Davon Stanley, who recently retired from the military, suffered critical injuries in May while supporting operations at sea of the US-built pier designed to increase flows of humanitarian aid into the enclave.
In a statement, the US Army confirmed that Stanley had died, though it did not specify when. He was receiving treatment in a long-term care medical center.
“Stanley was an instrumental and well respected first line leader in the 7th Transportation Brigade Expeditionary (TBX), especially during the mission to provide humanitarian assistance to the people of Gaza,” Colonel John “Eddie” Gray, commander of the unit, said.
Israel has been at war with the Hamas terror group in Gaza since October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 43,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 18,000 combatants in battle as of November and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 370.
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