In an eastern district of Gaza where the Israeli army suffered its heaviest losses since the start of the war, in densely built and still partly inhabited streets, soldiers mistakenly shot three Hamas hostages on Friday, December 15. The army appears to have ignored their presence. She does not know if they had managed to escape their captors or if they had fled and abandoned them to their fate.
Two of them, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, were captured on October 7 in Kfar Aza. This Israeli kibbutz extends over former agricultural lands within sight of the residents of Chadjaya, the vast neighborhood of the Palestinian metropolis where they were detained. The third man, Fouad El-Talalka, was one of around fifteen Bedouins employed in Israeli agricultural communities around the enclave, whom the Gazan attackers kidnapped without distinguishing them from the inhabitants of the kibbutz.
On Friday evening, hundreds of Israeli protesters gathered in central Tel Aviv and even in front of the army headquarters to call on the government to release the hostages ” whatever the price “. The death of these three young people heightens the fears of the families of Hamas captives, who do not suspect any negotiations are underway for a new truce and exchanges of prisoners.
Terror in the tunnels
This week, the Israeli press reported that the head of Mossad, David Barnea, had offered to go to Qatar to relaunch these talks there. The government denied barring him from taking the trip. Some hostages among those released in November – around a hundred, out of nearly 240 – had previously appealed to the government, recounting their terror in the Gaza tunnels where they were detained, under army bombardment. However, Israeli activists who are asking the State to make their release its top priority have appeared uncertain since December, no longer entirely knowing how to defend their demands, and marked like all of Israel by the growing number of military deaths – 119 soldiers. You are.
Since the resumption of hostilities on November 30, the army has set out to conquer the eastern neighborhoods and the historic center of Gaza, and Khan Younes, on the southern outskirts of the enclave. It suffered its heaviest losses in seven weeks of deployment in Chadjaya and in the suburbs of Jabaliya, further north. On December 14, nine fighters from the Golani Brigade, including a battalion commander, a colonel and four other officers, were killed in an attack on a building complex in downtown Chadjaya, where intelligence had not detected the mouth of a tunnel and a group of Hamas militiamen.
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