The Israeli security cabinet, which makes the main decisions around the war, is gathered on Tuesday with the high fire pending a thread due to the growing tension and threats between the parties, also bullow from Washington by President Donald Trump Trump . More than advancing in the second phase of the truce, whose negotiation should have begun in Doha (Qatar) eight days ago and that Israel keeps blocked, the meeting of the cabinet presided by Prime Minister Benjamín Netanyahu plans to agree on an answer to Hamas. The Islamist militia warned Monday that it could freeze the release of hostages next Saturday, so consider that they are repeated breaches of the high fire by the Jewish state.
Hamas has stressed that Tuesday that with the use of threats it will not be able to keep the truce and that the hostages return. That has been his response to the pressures made in the last hours by Trump, who said that, on Saturday, all the kidnapped were not free, “the doors of hell will open” in Gaza. The signed between Israel and the Islamist movement provides weekly exchanges of captives by Palestinian prisoners throughout the first two phases of high fire, of six weeks each.
Sami Abu Zuhri, one of the leaders of the Islamist group, has warned Trump – is Israel indirectly – that “it must remember that there is an agreement that must be respected by both parties, and this is the only way to bring return to the prisoners. ” “The language of threats has no value and only complicates things,” he said, reports the Reuters agency. That is precisely the language that usually uses the hardest wing representative in the Israeli cabinet, Bezalel Smotrich, head of finance. “We must give Hamas an ultimatum. Cut electricity and water, stop humanitarian aid, ”Smotrich has claimed during a religious encounter before the security cabinet meeting, according to local media.
Family protests
From the early morning, relatives of the hostages, along with other dozens of people, have cut road 1, which joins Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and is one of the main arteries of Israel. They press to continue fulfilling the ceasefire, which they see on the edge of the precipice with the consequences that would have for the interruption of the release of the kidnapped, both civil and military. They have caught flares while showing banners and posters with images of the captives. At the same time, another march has reached the building where the office of the Prime Minister in Jerusalem is, where some encounters with police officers have occurred.
The tension is also palpable at the headquarters of Parliament (Knest). There, Merav Svirsky, sister of one of the captives dead in Gaza, denounced that Israeli responsible are “sacrificing human lives.” He said it during a meeting with the president of the Constitution Committee, Simcha Rothman, contrary to the truce. Rothman has asked that “stop this bad agreement (high fire) as quickly as possible, to fight again and open the doors of hell to Hamas”, taking up the rhetoric used by Trump. “This is crazy. My brother was killed as a result of military pressure, ”said Svirsky, in a sour word exchange with Rothman that reports the newspaper Haaretz. Throughout the contest, only eight hostages have been taken from Gaza by force by Israeli troops and, in some cases, that led to death of about 300 Palestinians in the rescue operation.
It is in the second stage of the agreement, which should begin in early March, when the definitive fire is expected to occur, the withdrawal of Israeli occupation troops and the return of all living hostages. The third and final phase would be the beginning of the reconstruction of the strip and the delivery of the bodies of kidnapped, then, of the 76 hostages that remain in the hands of Hamas, it is estimated that several tens are dead.
This same Tuesday it has been confirmed that one of the deceased hostages is Shlomo Mansour, 86, who was kidnapped and killed by the Palestinian militia on October 7, 2023, when Hamas carried out the slaughter of some 1,200 people in Israeli territory with which the present war began, which has already left more than 48,000 fatalities in the strip. Mansour’s body continues to be retained in that enclave. This Tuesday has also been known for life evidence received by the family, that the twins Ziv and Gali Berman are still alive in the hands of the Islamists.
It is in the midst of this delicate process that Netanyahu was received at the White House last week. There Trump, who had already proposed to expel the Gazaties of his land, said in front of the Israeli president who had agreed that the United States took possession of the strip and turned it into something similar to a holiday place on the banks of the Mediterranean. A plan with ethnic cleaning dyes that has been frontally rejected by the United Nations and the vast majority of the international community.
Trump, in any case, tries to look for candidate countries to host those hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Gaza to which he plans to deport. This Tuesday is expected to receive King Abdalá II of Jordan in the White House. Jordan is, together with Egypt, a country very dependent on Washington’s help. And Trump quoted them as possible destination territories of the guns expelled.
