(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) The CIA’s hope of negotiating a ceasefire in Israel’s military strike on Gaza ground to a halt after the terrorist group Hamas suggested that many of the remaining hostages taken during its Oct. 7 massacre were already dead, the Israeli news site Walla reported.
“Hamas breached the understandings that were reached in Paris and which stipulated that 40 hostages would be released, and is claiming that it knows the location of less than 40 hostages who are alive,” said Israeli broadcaster Arutz Sheva, citing recent reports from the country’s N12 news channel.
פרסום ראשון במהדורה | חמאס אומר בשיחות במצרים למתווכות: אין לי יכולת לשחרר 40 חטופים במסגרת העסקה ההומניטרית ונוקב במספרים אחרים – פחותים מאלה שגובשו בישראל.
— Yaron Avraham ירון אברהם (@yaronavraham) April 8, 2024
With Hamas unable to furnish the 40 hostages needed to negotiate, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that he planned to launch another major military strike, Reuters reported.
“We are constantly working to achieve our goals—first and foremost, the release of all our hostages and achieving a complete victory over Hamas,” Netanyahu said in a video statement on Monday.
Officials from both sides of the conflict met in Egypt on Sunday in an attempt to negotiate a peace, with emissaries from Qatar and Egypt mediating, as well as CIA Director William Burns.
According to one anonymous Hamas official, the negotiations led to very little progress.
“There is no change in the position of the occupation [Israel] and therefore, there is nothing new in the Cairo talks,” he said. “There is no progress yet.”
Netanyahu, meanwhile, sees securing the city of Rafah—the final refuge of multiple Hamas battalions—as one of the major objectives for Israel’s military campaign.
Although Rafah, near the Gaza strip’s southern border with the Sinai peninsula, is the last significant point at which Hamas could secure itself and its supplies, other Palestinian refugees have also fled to the city to escape Israeli bombings in the north.
That has prompted significal backlash from the Biden administration and other globalist entities against America’s longtime ally, but Netanyahu remains undeterred by the threats.
“It will happen—there is a date,” Netanyahu told reporters regarding the forthcoming Rafah campaign, without specifying further.
Of the original 240 hostages taken by Hamas 129 remained unaccounted for, said a March report in the Wall Street Journal, citing Israeli officials.
That included 19 women, 10 people over the age of 75, and two children, according to the New York Post.
Officials previously estimated that between 34 and 50 of the hostages had died in captivity.
Some of those who survived have returned with harrowing accounts of their treatment, including the regular rape and degradation of women, girls and boys.
Headline USA’s Ben Sellers contributed to this report.
