Israel will begin talks for the second phase of a Gaza cease-fire, including negotiations with Hamas for the exchange of remaining living hostages for Palestinian prisoners, Foreign Minister Gideon Saar said on Feb. 18.
The talks were to have begun before the first phase ended on March 2, but Qatar, which is hosting them, said they had not yet started.
On Feb. 19, the Israeli government confirmed the four hostage bodies to be returned on Feb. 20 would include those of Shiri Bibas and her two children, Ariel and Kfir, who were 4 years and 9 months old, respectively, when kidnapped. The fourth body will be that of Oded Lifshitz, 83, a retired journalist who spent his life fighting for Arab rights.
Bibas’s husband, Yarden, had been held separately and was released on Feb. 1.
The kidnapped family’s plight came to symbolize the entire hostage crisis for many.
“My heart is torn,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a video statement to the nation. “Yours is, too. And the heart of the whole world should be torn as well because here, we see who we are dealing with, what we are dealing with—monsters.”
Hamas is also scheduled to release six living hostages on Feb. 22. Their return would mark the completion of the handover of 25 living hostages, which Hamas agreed to carry out in the six-week first phase of the cease-fire. Hamas still has four of the eight deceased that it promised to return to Israel.
Saar, in a press conference, said Israel is demanding complete demilitarization of the Gaza Strip.
A “Hezbollah model” would not be acceptable to Israel, he said, nor would the presence there of the Palestinian Authority.
The Palestinian Authority governs autonomous Palestinian affairs under the Israeli occupation in Judea and Samaria, and also did in Gaza until 2006, when, following Israel’s 2005 withdrawal from Gaza, it was defeated by Hamas in elections. In 2007, Hamas imprisoned, expelled, or executed the authority’s Fatah officials.
In the north, Israel delivered significant blows to Hezbollah’s military and, in cease-fire negotiations, forced its withdrawal north of the Litani River. But it has expressed repeated concerns that Hezbollah seeks to return to the border to attack Israel, and that the Lebanese Army and U.N. peacekeepers are doing little to stop it.
Hamas, in a statement reported by Al Jazeera on Feb. 19, said it was, in a second phase of the cease-fire deal, prepared to release all remaining Israeli hostages—all men and mostly of military age—in exchange for a lasting truce and a complete withdrawal of the Israeli army from Gaza.
Mossad chief David Barnea did so previously. It was unclear whether he, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, and IDF hostage point man Nitzan Alon would remain part of the negotiating team. Dermer is seen as closer to Netanyahu, with whom the others have sometimes clashed.
The negotiations’ agreed-upon second phase goalposts are the release of remaining living hostages held by Hamas for the further exchange of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, and a permanent end to the fighting.
Meanwhile, Hamas is demanding the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip, including in strategic areas such as the Philadelphi Corridor along the Egyptian border, while Israel wants the complete disintegration of Hamas’s military and political capabilities before it will completely withdraw.
