An Israeli delegation arrived in Cairo on July 17, according to Egyptian airport officials, to continue cease-fire talks.
International mediators continue to push Israel and Hamas toward a phased ceasefire deal that would halt the fighting and free about 120 hostages, or hostage bodies, still held by the terrorist group in Gaza.
The Israeli delegation includes six officials.
Israel has ramped up its attacks on Hamas in the last few weeks, both in Rafah in southern Gaza—once seen as the group’s last redoubt—and further north in and around Khan Yunis and Gaza City.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have targeted Hamas leaders and top Hezbollah figures in the north as well but also dislocated more civilians and generated, according to the Hamas-controlled Gazan health authorities, more Palestinian casualties.
Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant told U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin overnight that military operations in the Gaza Strip have created conditions that would enable a hostage deal to be reached, according to Mr. Gallant’s office.
“IDF operations in Gaza have led to the conditions necessary to achieve an agreement for the return of hostages, which is the highest moral imperative at this time,” Mr. Gallant said, according to his office’s statement.
The IDF said on July 16 that it had killed or captured half of Hamas’s military leaders and 14,000 of its fighters since the start of the war, following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of 1,200 people in southern Israel—mostly Israeli civilians but also including some foreign residents and IDF soldiers.
The Israeli offensive has killed over 38,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-controlled Gaza health authorities. The numbers cannot be verified. The ministry does not distinguish between combatants and civilians in its count.
Fighting continued throughout the Gaza Strip on July 17. The IDF said it had conducted airstrikes against 25 targets. Ground troops focused on central Gaza.
Israel on July 17 released 13 Palestinian prisoners who were then transferred to a hospital in the central Gaza Strip for treatment. Palestinian prisoners who have been released have accused Israel of mistreating and torturing them—allegations Israel denies.
The international group Human Rights Watch, meanwhile, accused Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, and at least four other Palestinian armed groups, of having committed “numerous war crimes and crimes against humanity against civilians” during the Oct. 7 attack.
Reporting more than nine months after the attack, the group said the crimes included “deliberate and indiscriminate attacks against civilians and civilian objects; willing killing of persons in custody; cruel and other inhumane treatment; sexual and gender-based violence; hostage taking; mutilation and despoiling of bodies; use of human shields; and pillage and looting.”
Hamas rejected the report as “lies and blatant bias” favoring Israel and demanded the group withdraw its report and apologize.
The accusations are nearly all supported, though, by the videos shot by terrorists during the attack and posted the same day on social media.
Israel’s Northern Front
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, meanwhile, on July 17, threatened to increase its rocket attacks on northern Israel and hit new targets there if the IDF keeps killing civilians in Lebanon. Five Syrian civilians, including three children, were killed in an Israeli strike on Lebanon on July 16, and three Lebanese civilians were killed the day before, the terrorist leader said in a televised address marking the Shi'ite holy day Ashoura, or Ashura.Hezbollah, an Iran-backed terrorist group, refers to all Israeli population centers as “settlements” and does not recognize Israel.
Hezbollah’s attacks have already stepped up. According to the Alma Research and Education Center, a strategic institute specializing in Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon and Syria, Hezbollah fired over 100 rockets on July 16.
The Alma Center said on July 17 that the terrorist group took responsibility for attacks on eight communities.
These included about 40 high-trajectory Grad rockets fired at the city of Kiryat Shmona, dozens of Grad rockets fired at Cabri, about 15 Grad rockets fired at Sa'ar and Gesher HaZiv, and dozens of Grad rockets fired at Miron, Kfah Hoshen, and Bar Yohai, the center said.
Hezbollah, according to the Alma Center, said the attacks were a response to IDF strikes in southern Lebanon. The IDF, in the previous 24 hours, struck Hezbollah infrastructure including a rocket launcher, compounds, and terrorists around Mansouri, Blat, Yarine, Kfarkela, Ayta ash Shab, Aitaroun, and Aalma El Chaeb.
IDF artillery additionally targeted threats near four communities: Kfarkela, Deir Mimas, Ayta ash Shab, and Majdal Zoun.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
