Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Tuesday that Hamas has agreed to release the six remaining live hostages on Saturday from the first phase of the ceasefire agreement — and four dead hostages on Thursday.
As of Monday, there were 14 hostages still left to be released under the first phase, out of 70 overall hostages. Six were known to be alive, though it is not yet known which six, or whether the two remaining child hostages — Ariel (5) and Kfir (2) Bibas — were among them. (Hamas claimed Tuesday that the children and their mother are dead; their father, Yarden, was released a few weeks ago.) The remaining 56, living and dead, will be released as part of a second phase of the ceasefire deal, still under negotiation.
Though the original deal for the first phase indicated that the hostage releases would be spread out over seven weeks, with a few being released every week, Netanyahu has sought to press Hamas to release the living hostages faster.
It would appear he has been successful, through talks with Hamas mediated by the Egyptian government in recent weeks.
In a statement, Netanyahu’s office said (translated from Hebrew by the Government Press Office):
Understandings have been reached in the Cairo negotiations according to which six living first-stage hostages will be released on Saturday.
This Thursday, four deceased hostages will be returned to Israel. Pursuant to the agreement, four additional deceased hostages are due to be returned to Israel next week.
Netanyahu has long faced significant domestic political pressure to reach a ceasefire deal, though Hamas was, until recently, the main obstacle to achieving one.
After some of the freed hostages returned home from Gaza in recent weeks looking emaciated — so much so that U.S. President Donald Trump said they looked “like Holocaust survivors” — that pressure only increased. Hamas, too, faces additional pressure as a result of its mistreatment of the hostages.
Israel is reportedly launching negotiations on the second phase of the deal soon.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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