Israel demands ‘information’ from mediators on Bibas family after father’s release
Israel demands ‘information’ from mediators on Bibas family after father’s release/node/2588637/middle-east
Israel demands ‘information’ from mediators on Bibas family after father’s release
This handout picture released by the Israeli government press office (GPO) shows newly-freed hostage Yarden Bibas (C) together with his sister and father aboard a military helicopter on their way to Sheba hospital in Ramat Gan on Feb. 1, 2025. (AFP)
Israel demands ‘information’ from mediators on Bibas family after father’s release
“Yarden has returned home. But his wife Shiri and his children Ariel and Kfir have not,” Gal Hirsch, Israel’s hostage coordinator, said
“We continue to demand information about their condition from the mediators“
Updated 7 sec ago
AFP
JERUSALEM: Israel on Saturday demanded information from mediators who brokered the ceasefire in Gaza about the fate of three family members of freed hostage Yarden Bibas.
“Yarden has returned home. But his wife Shiri and his children Ariel and Kfir have not. We have been searching for them for a long time, tracking their traces and investigating their fate,” Gal Hirsch, Israel’s hostage coordinator, said in a statement.
“The Bibas family... has been living in constant fear for their lives for a long time... We continue to demand information about their condition from the mediators.”
Like Bibas, his wife Shiri and their two boys were seized by militants on October 7, 2023 during Hamas’s attack on Israel and taken to Gaza.
Bibas’s sons — Kfir, the youngest hostage, whose second birthday fell in January, and his older brother Ariel, whose fifth birthday was in August — have become symbols of the hostages’ ordeal.
Hamas has previously declared that Shiri and the children were killed in an Israeli air strike in November 2023, but Israel has not confirmed their deaths.
Israeli hostages, Palestinian prisoners released in latest Gaza exchange
Latest stage in multi-phase ceasefire deal to end Gaza war
At the newly reopened Rafah crossing, Palestinian patients to be allowed to leave Gaza
Updated 4 sec ago
Reuters
GAZA/CAIRO: Palestinian militant group Hamas handed over three Israeli hostages on Saturday, and dozens of Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released in exchange, in the latest stage of a truce aimed at ending the 15-month war in Gaza.
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 separately handed over at the Gaza City seaport.
Hours later, 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees were released in the exchange. Among them, 150 arrived in Gaza while 32 got off a bus in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, where they were greeted by large crowds. One freed prisoner will be exiled to Egypt, according to the Hamas prisoners’ media office.
“I feel joy despite the journey of pain and hardship that we lived,” said Ali Al-Barghouti, who was serving two life sentences in an Israeli jail.
“The life sentence was broken and the occupation will one day be broken,” added Barghouti, as the crowd around him in Ramallah chanted “Allah Akbar (God is the most great).”
Ofer Kalderon, center, is released by Hamas militants in this still image taken from a video in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 1, 2025. (Reuters/Reuters TV)
At the newly reopened Rafah crossing on the southern border, [alestinian patients to be allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment in Egypt.
Mohammad Zaqout, a senior official in Gaza’s health ministry, however, criticized the limited number of patients allowed to travel for treatment, saying that around 18,000 people needed better health care.
In Israel, crowds gathered at the location in Tel Aviv known as Hostage Square to watch the release in the morning of the Israeli hostages on giant outdoor screens, mixing cheers and applause with tears as the three men appeared.
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.
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.
Israeli hostage Yarden Bibas waves on a stage before being handed over to members of the Red Cross in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on Feb. 1, 2025. (AFPTV/ AFP)
Negotiations on release of remaining hostages
The total number of hostages freed so far is 18, including five Thais who were part of an unscheduled release on Thursday.
After Saturday’s exchange, Israel will have released 583 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including militants serving life sentences for deadly attacks as well as some detained during the war but not charged.
As the fighting has abated, diplomatic efforts to build a wider settlement have stepped up.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet US President Donald Trump on Tuesday with the ceasefire in Gaza, and a possible normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia as part of a postwar deal likely to be a focus.
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 worked out.
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, which is intended to lead to a final end of the war in Gaza.
The initial six-week truce, agreed with Egyptian and Qatari mediators and backed by the United States, has mostly remained intact despite incidents that have led both sides to accuse the other of violating the deal.
Netanyahu’s government, which has hard-liners who opposed the ceasefire deal, and Hamas say they are committed to reaching an agreement in the second phase.
But prospects for a durable settlement remain unclear. The war started with a Hamas-led attack on Israel that killed 1,200 people, and saw more than 250 taken as hostages. The Israeli military campaign has killed more than 47,000 Palestinians. Gaza is in ruins and a deep legacy of bitterness and mistrust remains.
Israeli leaders continue to insist that Hamas cannot remain in Gaza, but the movement has taken every opportunity to demonstrate the control it continues to exert despite the loss of much of its former leadership and thousands of fighters during the war.
Arab foreign ministers reject transferring out Palestinians ‘under any circumstances’
Arab leaders and officials and look forward to working with Trump’s administration to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East
Updated 10 min 3 sec ago
Reuters
CAIRO: Arab foreign ministers on Saturday rejected the transfer of Palestinians from their land “under any circumstances or justifications,” presenting a unified stance against US President Donald Trump’s call for Egypt and Jordan to take in residents of the Gaza Strip.
In a joint statement following a meeting in Cairo, the foreign ministers and officials from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia Qatar, the Palestinian Authority and the Arab League said they were looking forward to working with Trump’s administration to achieve a just and comprehensive peace in the Middle East, based on a two-state solution.
Sick, wounded Palestinians leave for Egypt as Rafah crossing reopens
The reopening of the Rafah crossing represents a significant breakthrough
Israel agreed to reopen the crossing after Hamas released the last living female hostages in Gaza
Updated 01 February 2025
APP
RAFAH CROSSING, Egypt: A group of 50 sick and wounded Palestinian children began crossing to Egypt for treatment through Gaza’s Rafah crossing on Saturday, in the first opening of the border since Israel captured it nearly nine months ago.
The reopening of the Rafah crossing represents a significant breakthrough that bolsters the ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to earlier this month. Israel agreed to reopen the crossing after Hamas released the last living female hostages in Gaza.
Egyptian television showed an Palestinian Red Cross ambulance pulling up to the crossing gate, and several children were brought out on stretchers and transferred to ambulances on the Egyptian side.
Gunmen kill 10 in Alawite village in Syria: monitor
Updated 01 February 2025
AFP
DAMASCUS: Gunmen have shot dead 10 people in an Alawite-majority village in central Syria, a war monitor said on Saturday.
“Armed men committed a massacre” on Friday that killed “10 citizens in Arza village in the northern Hama countryside that is inhabited by citizens of the Alawite sect” of ousted leader Bashar Assad, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Facing flak, Red Cross defends its role in Israel-Hamas war
The Geneva-based organization had been accused of not doing enough to help hostages in Gaza or Palestinian detainees in Israel
ICRC officials said the organization could only do so much as it is reliant on the goodwill of the belligerents
Updated 01 February 2025
AFP
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.”
