Foreign embassies announce precautionary measures amid fears of all-out Israel-Hezbollah war

GAZA/CAIRO: Hamas released three hostages in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday as part of its ceasefire deal with Israel, and Israel began releasing some of the dozens of prisoners due to be freed in the fourth round of exchanges during the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.

The six-week phase one truce calls for the release of 33 hostages and nearly 2,000 prisoners, as well as the return of Palestinians to northern Gaza and an increase in humanitarian aid to the devastated territory.

Israel and Hamas are set next week to begin negotiating a second phase of the ceasefire, which calls for releasing the remaining hostages and extending the truce indefinitely. The war could resume in early March if an agreement is not reached.

Palestinian health authorities in Gaza also announced that the long-shuttered Rafah border crossing with Egypt would reopen on Saturday for thousands of Palestinians who desperately need medical care – a breakthrough that signals the ceasefire agreement continues to gain traction.

Ofer Kalderon, a French-Israeli dual national and Yarden Bibas were handed over to Red Cross officials in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis before being transferred to Israel. Israeli-American Keith Siegel was handed over separately a few hours later at the Gaza City seaport.

Bibas is the father of the two youngest hostages, baby Kfir, only 9 months old when he was kidnapped by Hamas-led gunmen on Oct. 7, 2023, and Ariel, who was 4 at the time of the cross-border attack.

Hamas said in November 2023 that the boys and their mother Shiri, who was taken at the same time, were killed in an Israeli airstrike. There has been no word on them since.

At the newly reopened Rafah crossing on the southern border, the first Palestinian patients to be allowed to leave Gaza, including children suffering from cancer and heart conditions, were expected to cross over to Egypt in a bus provided by the World Health Organization.

Saturday’s handover saw none of the chaotic scenes that overshadowed an earlier transfer on Thursday, when Hamas guards struggled to shield hostages from a surging crowd in Gaza.

But it was once again an occasion for a show of force by uniformed Hamas fighters who paraded in the area where the handovers took place in a sign of their re-established dominance in Gaza despite the heavy losses suffered in the war.

Kalderon, whose two children Erez and Sahar were released in the first hostage exchange in November 2023, and Bibas both briefly mounted a stage in Khan Younis, in front of a poster of Hamas figures including Mohammad Deif, the former military commander whose death was confirmed by Hamas this week, before being handed over to the Red Cross officials.

“Ofer Kalderon is free! We share the immense relief and joy of his loved ones after 483 days of unimaginable hell,” French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement.

Negotiations on release of remaining hostages

Eighteen hostages, including five Thais freed on Thursday, have now been released in exchange for 400 Palestinian prisoners and detainees.

Negotiations are due to start by Tuesday on agreements for the release of the remaining hostages and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza in a second phase of the deal.

During the first phase of the ceasefire, 33 children, women and older male hostages as well as sick and injured, were due to be released, with more than 60 men of military age left for a second phase which must still be negotiated.

The initial six-week ceasefire, agreed with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the United States, has so far stayed on track despite a number of incidents that have led both sides to accuse the other of violating the deal.

The Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023 killed some 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage, according to Israeli figures.

Israel’s campaign in response has destroyed much of the densely populated Gaza Strip and killed more than 47,000 Palestinians, according to Palestinian health authorities.

GENEVA: The Red Cross, accused of not doing enough to help hostages in Gaza or Palestinian detainees in Israel, has defended itself in a rare statement outlining the limits of its role.
Insisting on its neutrality, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the escalation of violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories has triggered “a proliferation of dehumanizing language and of false and misleading information about the ICRC and our work in the current conflict.”

In recent days, ICRC vehicles have facilitated the transfer of Palestinians out of Israeli detention, and hostages held in the Gaza Strip since Hamas’s attack in Israel on October 7, 2023.
But the transfer of hostages to the ICRC has been sharply criticized following chaotic scenes on Thursday as masked fighters from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, carrying automatic weapons, struggled to hold back a surging crowd.
ICRC officials “did nothing to interfere with this intimidating display of indignity and public humiliation,” Gerald Steinberg, president of the right-wing Israeli organization NGO Monitor, wrote in the Australian-based online magazine Quillette.
The ICRC said: “Ensuring the safety and security of the handover operations is the responsibility of the parties to the agreement.”
Furthermore, “Interfering with armed security personnel could compromise the safety of ICRC staff, and more importantly that of the hostages.”
The Geneva-based organization also said it had not given permission for “people carrying Hamas flags to get on top of our buses in Ramallah” during the release of Palestinian detainees, “nor did we have the capacity to prevent people from doing so.”

In late 2023, Israel’s then foreign minister Eli Cohen said the Red Cross had “no right to exist” if it did not visit the hostages in Gaza.
However, the organization is reliant on the goodwill of the belligerents.
“From day one, we have called for the immediate release of all the hostages, and for access to them,” it says.
In World War II, the ICRC visited prisoners of war but its mandate did not explicitly extend to civilians unless governments allowed it.
The ICRC acknowledges that during World War II, it “failed to speak out and more importantly act on behalf of the millions of people who suffered and perished in the death camps, especially the Jewish people targeted, persecuted, and murdered under the Nazi regime.”
In its statement, the ICRC reaffirmed that it was the “greatest failure” in the organization’s history, and said it unequivocally rejects anti-Semitism in all its forms.

The ICRC has been accused, particularly on social media, of not putting pressure on Israel to secure visits to Palestinian detainees since October 7, 2023, and also of not doing enough to help the wounded in the Gaza Strip.
The humanitarian organization says it has been actively engaging with the Israeli authorities “to allow for the resumption of ICRC visits and family contacts for these detainees.”
As for the wounded in Gaza, the ICRC said it had received requests to evacuate hospitals in the north, but could not regularly safely access the area due the “extremely difficult security situation — together with roads blocked and unreliable communications.”
Following the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that came into effect on January 19, the ICRC, which already had 130 staff in Gaza, is deploying more personnel, including doctors.

In 1968, Leopold Boissier, a former ICRC president, noted that the criticism most frequently levelled at the organization “is the silence with which it surrounds some of its activities.”
Nearly 60 years later, the ICRC is facing similar accusations, notably since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Founded in Geneva in 1863, the organization, which has more than 18,000 staff in over 90 countries, denies being “complicit” and says it establishes trust through “confidential dialogue with all parties to the conflict.”
“Our neutrality and impartiality are critical to our ability to operate in any context.”