The terrorist group Hamas has rejected a generous Israeli ceasefire offer in exchange for the release of remaining hostages, media reports say. Israel had offered “a two-month cease-fire in exchange for hostages, and a free passage out of Gaza for its leaders,” the Israeli news website Ynet reported Tuesday.
The Associated Press, the news outlet that broke the story, cited an Egyptian official saying, “Hamas rejected the proposal and is insisting that no more hostages will be released until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws from Gaza.” The Israeli government did not comment on the news reports.
More than a hundred days since the October 7 attacks, over 130 Israeli hostages are still believed to be in Hamas captivity. Hostages, including women and children, are being kept in underground caged cells and subjected to torture, the recent IDF capture of a terror tunnels show.
The Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported:
Hamas has rejected Israel’s proposal for a two-month ceasefire, dealing a blow to negotiations seeking the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza.According to a senior Egyptian official, the deal involved freeing hostages in exchange for the release of Palestinian terrorists imprisoned by Israel.Despite the potential for a significant breakthrough, Hamas insisted on a complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza before agreeing to release any more hostages. The Israeli government has not officially commented on the ongoing talks.According to American media reports, sources revealed that Israel’s intelligence chief suggested the departure of senior Hamas leaders from Gaza as part of a broader ceasefire arrangement.
Hamas’s rejection of yet another Israeli ceasefire proposal shows how little regard the terror group has for the plight of Gazans, which it has been using as a human shield and cannon fodder. In early December, Hamas broke a hostages-for-terrorists deal brokered by the Biden administration and the Qatari government. The deal fell apart after Hamas refused to release captive Israeli women and children and resumed attacks on IDF troops in Gaza.
With Israeli soldiers encircling the last major Hamas stronghold of Khan Younis, Palestinian terrorists carried out the deadliest attacks since the Gaza offensive began nearly three months ago.
A Hamas RPG struck a building as IDF soldiers were preparing to demolish the structure, killing 21 of them. A nearby building also collapsed due to secondary explosions apparently caused by landmines recovered by the Israeli soldiers from the nearby areas, news reports indicate.
“It said the soldiers were preparing explosives to demolish two buildings on Monday when a rocket-propelled grenade was fired at a nearby tank, setting off the explosion prematurely and causing the buildings to collapse on them,” Sky News UK reported.
Shortly after the incident, the IDF confirmed the complete encirclement of Khan Younis, the last remaining major Hamas bastion where top terror commanders are believed to be hiding. The Hamas leadership is using the remaining Israeli hostages as human shields as they hide under miles-long terror tunnels.
The Jerusalem Post reported the details of the tragic attack:
The IDF announced the death of 21 reservists fighting in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.Hamas forces fired a rocket-propelled grenade on multiple adjacent structures, along with landmines that the IDF forces had collected and brought into the buildings, which caused a total collapse that killed 19 soldiers and injured several others on Monday.The incident occurred around 4:00 p.m. in al-Muasi in central Gaza.In addition, a separate rocket-propelled grenade was fired on an IDF tank which killed two IDF soldiers and injured two others. (…)The IDF forces who were harmed were mostly reservists assigned to clear certain areas of dangerous items, such as mines.Rescue activities went on for hours with the brigade commander having been on site from the start of the incident.
More than two hundred Israeli soldiers have been killed in action in Gaza since the military launched the ground offensive against Hamas terrorists nearly thirteen weeks ago.
“556 IDF soldiers have been killed since the start of the war on October 7,” the Israeli broadcaster Arutz Sheva noted. “More than 200 of them have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the ground maneuver began on October 27.”
With the Israeli military getting ever closer to hostages, the soldiers are using loudspeakers to blast Israeli radio in terror tunnels in a bid to reassure the hostages that the IDF is closing in on their captors.
Gaza has hundreds of miles of terror tunnels, many of them interconnected to enable the movement of terror fighters and weaponry. These deep underground tunnels also function as dungeons for holding hostages, the recent IDF finds show.
The Times of Israel reported:
After conquering a Hamas tunnel in the northern Gaza Strip, a group of Israeli Defense Forces soldiers went down it with some unusual kit in hand — not explosives, robot probes, or pistols for close combat, but rather old-style, dial-operated transistor radios.Their mission was to descend until the devices could no longer receive AM transmissions from Israel. That point, they found, was at about 10 to 12 meters (32 to 39 feet) depth, generally the upper “floors” of the Hamas terrorists’ subterranean network.The January 4 experiment was ordered by their commander at the behest of Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi, who had just expanded the country’s most popular broadcaster, Army Radio, from industry-standard FM onto complementary AM channels.AM’s greater range meant emergency updates had a better chance of being heard by civilians in bomb shelters. Troops in Gaza also benefitted, as they were being allowed transistor radios to keep themselves informed, after surrendering their cellphones, lest those be geolocated by Hamas.
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