Israel at war: What happened on day 17?

Two captives out of the 222 hostages Hamas abducted on October 7 were released from Gaza to Egypt on Monday night, Israel confirmed.

Nurit Cooper, 80, and Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, both from Kibbutz Nir Oz, were released to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which took them to the Rafah crossing where they were met by Israeli officials. 

Their husbands, also in their 80s, remain in captivity.

The women had been freed after 20 trucks of humanitarian aid entered Gaza, and amid reports that Qatar separately had secured the release of some 50 hostages with foreign passports. These two women were both Israeli and were not part of that deal.

“We decided to release them for compelling humanitarian and health reasons,” Hamas spokesman Abu Ubaida said.

Hamas did this “despite the occupation committing more than eight violations of the procedures that were agreed upon with the mediating brothers for the occupation to adhere to during this day to complete the handover process,” Ubaida said.

The Hamas announcement came shortly after i24News reported Monday evening that representatives of the ICRC were on their way to Gaza to redeem the hostages and against the backdrop of a report by The New York Times on Monday that said Hamas was exploring the possibility of releasing hostages who hold foreign passports.

The Times cited an Israeli military official who mentioned that Qatar is actively engaged in mediating negotiations for the release of these hostages, separate from those who are exclusively Israeli citizens. The Israeli official cited in the Times reportedly made this claim based on discussions between the United States and Qatar.

The Wall Street Journal later said that negotiations for the release of a group of 50 captives in Gaza failed because Hamas conditioned their release on the supply of fuel to the Gaza Strip, which Israel has refused to allow because it said Hamas uses the fuel to launch rockets at Israel. 

Efforts on multiple fronts

According to KAN News, conversations are occurring on multiple fronts, including via several intermediaries, from former Mossad chief Yossi Cohen to Ronen Levi, who served for almost 30 years in the intelligence and defense communities and has connections in Qatar and other Gulf countries. 

Several media new sites speculated that Israel has held off from embarking on a military ground campaign in Gaza to allow for further negotiations for the release of the hostages.

In Washington, US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said US President Joe Biden and his administration were committed to ensuring that all the hostages would be freed.

“We’re going to [work] with our partners to do everything we can to get hostages out,” he told reporters at the Foreign Press Center. “They should be released immediately; there’s no reason for them to be held in the first place.”

John Kirby, National Security Council Coordinator for Strategic Communications, answers questions during the daily press briefing at the White House in Washington, US, February 17, 2023. (credit: REUTERS/EVELYN HOCKSTEIN)

In a briefing at the White House, Kirby dismissed questions about the possibility of a ceasefire in exchange for the hostages. Hamas could at any moment simply release all of them, he said.

“Here’s an idea: They [Hamas] can release them all now,” Kirby said. “They can let them go now, because they can release them all now. Just let them go now, because these people did not do anything wrong. They are just innocent civilians caught up in this conflict. Let them go now.

“Now, I recognize that is not going to happen, which is why we are going to keep working with our partners in the region to do what we can to get them released.”

At the Foreign Press Center briefing, Kirby also appeared to dismiss reports linking the absence of an Israeli ground campaign with the hostages, noting that he "won’t speak for the Israelis and what they will or won’t do on the ground.  All I can tell you is that we have been working – and I don’t mean – and this is not an exaggeration – we’ve been working by the hour since the moment we found out that Americans were being held hostage to get them released."

IDF Spokesperson Daniel Hagari gives a statement to the media in Tel Aviv on October 16, 2023. (credit: AVSHALOM SASSONI/FLASH90)

During an evening briefing, IDF Spokesman R.-Adm. Daniel Hagari said that the IDF's delay in entering Gaza was due to "strategic considerations" and that Israel was "looking at the situation in the entire Middle East."

Kirby reiterated the Biden administration’s strong support for Israel’s campaign against Hamas in light of the October 7 attack, in which more than 1,400 civilians and soldiers were killed. An estimated 5,000 Palestinians have been killed in IAF airstrikes on Gaza and failed Palestinian rocket launches.

First hostages released last week

Judith Tai Raanan and her daughter Natalie Shoshana Raanan, US citizens who were taken as hostages by Palestinian Hamas militants, walk while holding hands with Brig.-Gen. (Ret.) Gal Hirsch, Israel's Coordinator for the Captives and Missing, after they were released by the militants. (credit: Government of Israel/Handout via REUTERS)

Last Friday, Hamas released two American-Israeli hostages, Judith Raanan, 59, and her daughter Natalie, 17.

The terror organization said they were released on humanitarian grounds. The mother and daughter were transferred from Hamas to the Red Cross, then to the Israeli border and into Israeli hands. They were met by Brig.-Gen. (res.) Gal Hirsch, the country's coordinator for hostages and missing persons and a team of security officials.

Until now, the Red Cross has not been allowed to meet with the hostages nor deliver the medications earmarked for them, the organization said. However, on Monday, the Red Cross confirmed it had assisted in the release of the captives.

"Our role as a neutral intermediary between the parties to the conflict makes our work possible," the organization said. "We are prepared to visit the remaining captives in captivity and assist in any future releases. We are pleased that those who have been released will soon be reunited with their families and loved ones."

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte spoke with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on preventing the war in Israel and Gaza from spreading further in the region, Dutch press agency ANP reported on Monday.

Rutte also spoke of the importance of the prospect of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel, calling the two-state solution "the only way to bring stability to the entire region," ANP said.

Rutte's visit followed confirmation by the Dutch foreign ministry on Sunday of the death of a 33-year-old Dutch woman who had traveled to Gaza to visit family shortly before Palestinian terrorists of Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7

Rutte has previously called for "humanitarian pauses" in the fighting in order to help aid reach the civilian residents of the Gaza Strip, which Israel has bombed in retaliation for the Oct. 7 attack.

The United States will act appropriately to secure its national security interests in the Middle East but does not want to see the Israel-Hamas conflict widen, White House spokesman John Kirby said on Monday amid what he called an uptick in rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed proxy groups.

Humanitarian aid trucks entered Gaza through the Egyptian Rafah crossing for the third day in a row as the European Union foreign ministers in Luxembourg discussed the need for a pause in the fighting between the IDF and Hamas.  

"Now the most important thing is for humanitarian support to go into Gaza," European Union foreign envoy Josep Borrell told reporters on arrival at a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg.

Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) are on their way to Gaza to take out 50 hostages of the more than 200 captured by Hamas, i24NEWS reported Monday evening. 

The news came against the backdrop of a report by the New York Times on Monday that said Hamas was exploring the possibility of releasing hostages who hold foreign passports.

This is a developing story.

"There is not a place in Israel that is safe now," according to IDF spokesman Maj. Doron Spielman. "If Hamas is not taken care of, then there will literally be no place to go in the country."

Spielman spoke to The Jerusalem Post from Kibbutz Be'eri in southern Israel, where over 100 of the community's approximately 1,000 residents were tragically killed on October 7. Israeli strikes targeting Hamas interrupted the conversation frequently with loud, bullet-like booms.

Israel's Shin Bet and Police force jointly interrogated six detainees from Gaza who participated in the destruction and mass murder of October 7, 2023. 

The footage from the interrogation was released on Monday and showed selected clips from six separate interrogations. 

Each terrorist had a slightly different experience, but Israeli intelligence forces noted a number of common themes. All the Hamas agents were given explicit instructions to kill and kidnap civilians including the elderly along with women and children. While they did this, their commanders stayed behind in Gaza. 

As Israel prepares to invade the Gaza Strip, many families of hostages seized by Hamas are pleading with the government to rein in the war effort and instead negotiate the release of their loved ones.

Highlighting the appalling dilemma facing the whole country, other relatives warn mediation could take years and say their best hope lies with the military, hoping ground forces could find the missing men, women and children before it is too late.

"The terrorist group Hamas operates at an unimaginable level of evil, is sponsored by Iran, and exists to exterminate the Jewish people and wipe Israel off the face of the map," charged the president of the International Ombudsman Institute (IOI), Chris Field in a letter addressed to Israel's ombudsman last week.

"There can be no false moral equivalences in the lawful and correct response of Israel to those who came to slaughter the Jewish people," the letter to Matanyahu Englman continued. "No international body should be allowed to falter in their resolve to eradicate a body that actually pays their members to kill Jews. There can be no peace in the Middle East while terrorism and undemocratic representation of the peoples of Gaza seek to eliminate the Jewish people."

Almost 20,000 people have been internally displaced in south Lebanon and elsewhere since early October, a UN agency said on Monday, as violence escalates on the Lebanese-Israeli border following the eruption of the Gaza war.

The International Organization for Migration said 19,646 people had been displaced inside Lebanon since it began tracking movements on Oct. 8, the day after an assault on Israel by Hamas terrorists and an Israeli counteroffensive on Gaza.

It said the movements were mostly by those fleeing the south although some departures were also reported elsewhere.