Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Before launching a massive ground attack into the Gaza Strip, Israel is still giving a long rope to Hamas, which released two American hostages as hundreds of thousands of Gazans anxiously waited for their turn to get the much-need humanitarian aid that started flowing in from Egypt on Saturday.
The inexplicable delay in the Israeli ground attack seems to be because of its military’s inability to secure the safe release of over 200 hostages of diverse nationalities that the terrorist Hamas outfit has kept captive in their rather inaccessible fortress, the 500-km-long underground labyrinth of some 1300 tunnels spread across the Gaza Strip. However, Qatar has come forward to mediate between Hamas and Israel to secure their release.
Once these hostages are released, and Israel gets enough intelligence on these tunnels, it is very likely to invade Gaza, reports said.
US President Joe Biden thanked Qatar for mediation and expressed happiness when Israel confirmed they had received Israel-born Chicago resident Judith, 59, and her daughter Natalie Raanan, 17, from Hamas, which released them on “humanitarian grounds” at the Gaza boundary.
They are the first captives released since the Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on October 7, killing 1,400 people and taking around 200 hostages, the media reported.
Palestinian officials say more than 4,000 people have been killed in Gaza, which has been under Israeli bombardment since the last two weeks.
Brig. Gen. Gal Hirsch, and the members of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), received the two hostages from Hamas at the boundary of the Palestinian enclave on Friday evening, said the Israeli prime minister’s office, the BBC reported.
The mother and daughter were staying at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in southern Israel when they were abducted during the Hamas incursion. The Raanans were taken hostage while celebrating Natalie’s graduation and the 85th birthday of her grandmother, Tamar Ranaan, who survived the Hamas attack.
A Hamas spokesman, Abu Ubaida, said the mother and daughter had been released “for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless.”
As of Friday, at least 32 American citizens had been confirmed dead this month in the Israel-Hamas conflict, while 10 remained unaccounted for, according to the US State Department. America and Britain are working with Qatari officials to help secure the release of their own citizens.
Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement: “We will continue our dialogue with both the Israelis and Hamas, and we hope these efforts will lead to the release of all civilian hostages from every nationality.”
Other countries with nationals being held in Gaza include Argentina, Germany, France, Thailand, and Portugal.
Meanwhile, the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and Gaza opened to let a small amount of desperately needed aid flow to Palestinians running short of food, medicine, and water in the territory that is under an Israeli siege.
On Thursday, President Biden had warned that this humanitarian aid flow to the Gaza Strip would be stopped if Hamas tried to loot it.
A convoy, including 20 aid trucks, entered the Gaza Strip on Saturday from Egypt, carrying medicine and food supplies, Hamas said in a statement.
More than 200 trucks carrying roughly 3,000 tons of aid had been positioned near the crossing for days ready to head into Gaza, Al Jazeera reported.
“The relief aid convoy that is supposed to enter today includes 20 trucks that carry medicine, medical supplies, and a limited amount of food supplies (canned goods),” Hamas’s media office said earlier.
Martin Griffiths, the UN’s emergency relief coordinator, welcomed the delivery, saying it followed “days of deep and intense negotiations with all relevant sides to make sure that aid operation into Gaza resumes as quickly as possible and with the right conditions”.
Israel has repeated that the aid shipments entering Gaza on Saturday from Egypt would not include fuel.
This is a major concern for the besieged enclave’s 2.3 million population and the relief agencies providing essential services, as fuel is required to pump the water supply and power generators used for operating crucial facilities such as hospitals. Without fuel, they cannot operate the trucks needed to transport water or pump it. On Sunday, Gaza’s last functioning seawater desalination plant shut down due to fuel running out, causing a severe water crisis.
Several hospitals are currently completely out of service while others are running on very low fuel supplies and had to shut down major health departments.
Without fuel, thousands of patients including newborn babies in incubators are at immediate risk. Doctors say many patients, such as kidney and cancer patients, are already straddling a line between life and death.
For two weeks, Israel has blockaded the war-ravaged enclave and launched waves of punishing air strikes following the October 7 Hamas invasion of southern Israel.
Many in Gaza, reduced to having only one meal a day and without enough water to drink, are waiting desperately for aid. Hospital workers also needed medical supplies and fuel for their generators as they treated thousands of people wounded in the bombings.
Israel has sealed off the territory, forcing Palestinians to ration food and drink filthy water from wells. Hospitals say they are running low on medicine and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide blackout.
Hamas’s media office issued a statement on Saturday saying that expected truckloads of aid “will not change the catastrophic medical conditions in Gaza”.