Israel-Hamas War Day 131: What happened in Gaza?

The IDF named Staff-Sergeant Omer Sarah Benjo as the soldier killed by an earlier Hezbollah rocket attack on northern Israel on Wednesday.

Benjo was 20 years old from the town of Ge'a. She served in the 869th Battalion.

The IDF raised her rank to Staff-Sergeant posthumously. Her family has been notified.

Staff sergeant Omer Sarah Benjo was killed by Hezbollah rocket fire in northern Israel. February 14, 2024. (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called on Wednesday for Hamas to speed an exchange of hostages for prisoners with Israel to spare Palestinian people further "catastrophe," the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

The prime ministers of Spain and Ireland asked the European Commission on Wednesday to urgently review whether Israel is complying with its human rights obligations in Gaza.

"We are deeply concerned at the deteriorating situation in Israel and in Gaza... The expanded Israeli military operation in the Rafah area poses a grave and imminent threat that the international community must urgently confront," they said in a joint letter shared by the Spanish government.

"We also recall the horror of Oct. 7, and call for the release of all hostages and an immediate ceasefire that can facilitate access for urgently needed humanitarian supplies," it read.

One soldier was killed, and several were hospitalized from rocket fire in northern Israel on Wednesday morning as Hezbollah ramped up its attacks on Israeli cities, the IDF stated.

"A short while ago, numerous launches were identified crossing from Lebanon into the areas of Netu'a, Manara, and into an IDF base in northern Israel," the military said in a statement. "The IDF struck the sources of the fire. As a result of the launches, an IDF soldier was killed, and several other IDF soldiers were injured. The soldiers were evacuated for medical treatment at a hospital, their families have not yet been informed."

Sirens were heard in Safed, Meron, and across the Upper Western Galilee as a barrage of rockets struck.

One day after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, Hezbollah rushed to join the fighting. However, since the beginning and even until today, the "support" it provides to Hamas is limited and even just symbolic.

The organization attacks IDF positions and Israeli towns along the border, but takes care not to escalate the conflict into a full-scale war. While Israel has evacuated northern residents from their homes and suffered losses, it strikes Hezbollah with a force unprecedented in the past, and so far, the organization has lost nearly 200 terrorists in IDF strikes.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told US President Joe Biden during their phone call on Sunday that "contrary to reports and interpretations in the Israeli media," he is indeed interested in reaching a deal to release the hostages held by Hamas in Gaza.

However, according to Netanyahu, it should be a deal that can pass through the cabinet, according to senior American and Israeli officials who are familiar with the contents of the conversation.

The Biden administration is working “intensely” on a hostage deal, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Tuesday night as the Israeli delegation to talks in Cairo returned home without any clear results.

“We are working to bring home the remaining hostages in Gaza. We are working intensely with Egypt [and] with Qatar on a proposal to bring about their release,” Blinken told reporters in Washington.

As part of an intense push for what US President Joe Biden said Monday he hoped would include a six-week pause to the war, CIA Director William Burns held talks in Cairo that followed those he had convened in Paris late last month with Qatari, Egyptian, and Israeli officials.

Israel recovered a video of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a tunnel under Gaza's Khan Yunis. The IDF revealed the video to the public on Tuesday evening.

Sinwar was captured on film on October 10 by a camera installed by Hamas, IDF Spokesperson R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari said that evening. The IDF has reportedly been operating in that tunnel in recent days. Hagari added that the video shows Sinwar fleeing with one of his wives and his children. 

Hamas is returning to power in northern Gaza, IDF Col. (res.) Hezi Nachman said in an interview with 103FM Tuesday morning, adding that the Israeli military isn't doing enough to stop it.

Speaking to Ben Caspit and Yinon Magal, Nachman, the former head of the Menashe Brigade, was discussing a letter to the war cabinet he and several other IDF commanders signed calling on Gazans not to be allowed to return home in the North until the hostages come home.

A Qatari source conveyed to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas that Hamas has agreed to form a technocratic government in Gaza after the war, according to a Tuesday report from Sky News Arabia citing a Palestinian source in Ramallah.

On Sunday, the Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported that Abbas was set to discuss a new Palestinian unity government with the Qatari Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.