After making more demands in response to President Joe Biden’s ceasefire offer, Gaza-based terrorist group Hamas claims that it has ‘no idea’ how many of the 116 remaining Israeli hostages are still alive.
“I don’t have any idea about that; no one has any idea about this,” Lebanon-based senior Hamas terrorist Osama Hamdan told CNN on Friday.
While oblivious to the fate of Israeli hostages, including women and children, languishing in Palestinian captivity for more than eight months, Hamdan, who also serves as Hamas spokesman, demanded a permanent ceasefire and complete Israeli withdrawal from Gaza as part of a Biden-backed deal.
The Gaza-based terror group calls for “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza,” he insisted.
The Israeli TV channel i24NEWS reported senior Hamas terrorist’s remarks:
In an interview with CNN released on Friday, Hamas spokesperson and political bureau member Osama Hamdan said that he did not know about how many of 120 hostages in Gaza are still alive. “No one has any idea about that,” he stated, adding that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) operation to free four hostages on Saturday resulted in deaths of three others, including an American citizen.Hamdan told CNN that any deal to release the hostages must include guarantees of a permanent ceasefire and the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip.He said that the latest proposal on the table backed by the United States did not meet Hamas’ requirements as the group seeks “a clear position from Israel to accept the ceasefire, a complete withdrawal from Gaza, and let the Palestinians to determine their future by themselves, the reconstruction, the [lifting] of the siege, and we are ready to talk about a fair deal about the prisoners exchange.”“The Israelis want the ceasefire only for six weeks and then they want to go back to the fight, which I think the Americans, till now, they did not convince the Israelis to accept [a permanent ceasefire],” stated the Hamas spokesperson, highlighting that the U.S. needs to convince Israel to accept a permanent ceasefire as part of the deal.
Undeterred by outside pressure and Hamas’s stalling of hostage negotiations, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) was pushing ahead against Hamas terrorists in Rafah, a senior IDF commander assured. “The plan is clear going forward, we are continuing to move forward until we achieve our goals,” chief of the IDF Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman said Friday.
The IDF was conducting military operations inside the Hamas stronghold of Rafah. The military was carrying out “effective, precise, intelligence-based and targeted operational activity to thwart terrorists and terrorist infrastructure in the Rafah area,” the IDF said in a statement Friday.
Israeli ground troops, assisted by the air force, were destroying Hamas’s capability to wage its terrorist war. “Over the past day, the troops eliminated a number of terrorists and located large quantities of weapons and underground tunnel shafts. A number of explosive devices, as well as Hamas terrorist infrastructure sites, were located and destroyed by IDF ground troops,” the IDF statement disclosed.
Iran-backed Hezbollah terror group has stepped up rocket attacks on Israel after an IDF airstrike killed one of its senior-most terrorist commanders Tuesday night. Lebanon-based Sami Taleb Abdullah, who headed Hezbollah’s Nasr terrorist force, was among the leading planners of the offensive launched on Israel’s northern border in the wake of the October 7 massacre.
Israel retaliated to intensified cross-border fire by hitting Hezbollah terrorist bases and rocket launch sites in southern Lebanon.
The Israeli news website YNET reported Friday:
Hezbollah launched a barrage of 30 rockets at Israel on Friday, targeting the northern city of Kiryat Shmona, on the third day of heavy fire directed at Israel’s north. No injuries were reported but fires broke out in the city and surrounding areas.Hezbollah claimed responsibility for the attack and said it was in response to an IDF strike on the area of Tyre in South Lebanon late on Thursday. Two women were killed in shelling from Israeli naval vessels on a building used by Hezbollah operatives. Lebanese media said at least 20 people were injured. (…)Gordin said the IDF had destroyed all of the known front positions of the terror group and was will prepared to prevent an infiltration over land by Hezbollah’s elite Radwan force.
Israel on Friday rejected a French offer to create a multinational task force to tackle Hezbollah’s aggression. French President Emmanuel Macron recently proposed a ‘trilateral task force’ comprising the U.S., France, and Israel as Hezbollah steps up terror campaign using its bases in southern Lebanon.
President Macron, who is fighting for his political survival at home after losing badly to Marine Le Pen’s right-wing National Rally party in last week’s EU election, is trying to project himself as a statesman ahead of the snap parliamentary elections later this month.
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant rejected the French proposal. With Macron at the helm, France has “adopted hostile policies against Israel,” the Israeli defense minister said.
The Times of Israel reports:
Defense Minister Yoav Gallant rules out joining an initiative promoted by French President Emmanuel Macron in which France, the United States and Israel would form a contact group to work on defusing escalating tensions with Hezbollah on the northern border.“As we fight a just war, defending our people, France has adopted hostile policies against Israel,” Gallant says in a statement. “In doing so, France ignores the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israeli children, women and men.”“Israel will not be a party to the trilateral framework proposed by France,” he writes.
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