Israel promised to mass forces inside and around Gaza and reiterated that “intense fighting” would resume if Hamas did not release three hostages by noon on Saturday.
“We’re talking about these Israeli hostages arriving back in Israel,” David Mencer, a spokesperson for the Israeli government, said Thursday. “If that does not happen by Saturday, noon, the ceasefire will end and the IDF will resume intense military operations until Hamas is fully defeated.”
Earlier, Hamas said it would release hostages according to a schedule outlined in the ceasefire agreement, a reversal of its previous warning that it would indefinitely postpone hostage-prisoner swaps over Israeli violations of the truce.
Senior Hamas official Bassem Naim told NBC News on Thursday that there were “positive signs of an agreement” after a Hamas-led delegation held talks with Egyptian and Qatari mediators in Cairo on Wednesday.
The hard-won truce looked close to collapse earlier this week after Hamas accused Israel of shooting at civilians, blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid and inhibiting Palestinians’ passage into northern Gaza.
Negotiators are currently hashing out the second phase of the agreement’s three-stages.
Tensions also surged as President Donald Trump said that Palestinians should be displaced from the Gaza Strip so the area could be redeveloped.
Hamas earlier this week said that Israel had violated the terms of the ceasefire by shooting at civilians, blocking the delivery of humanitarian aid into the enclave and inhibiting Palestinians’ passage to northern Gaza.
Trump also threatened to let “all hell break out” in Gaza if the hostages were not released as planned. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Israel would resume “intense fighting.”
Repeating Netanyahu’s warning, Mencer said that under the existing ceasefire deal, Israel expected three live hostages to be released on Saturday and not all, as was previously suggested by Trump.
But Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz kept up his country’s response to the week’s back-and-forth briefings, issuing a statement late Wednesday in which he said that “the gates of hell will open upon” Hamas if it did not free any more captives.
The hostage crisis erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants seized 251 people during the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. Under the first phase of the ceasefire deal, due to last 42 days, Hamas has incrementally released 16 of 33 hostages.
The ensuing military offensive in Gaza has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials, with most of its 2.3 million population forcibly displaced.
Katz’s remarks are characteristic of those across Israel’s hard right, which has representatives in the country’s coalition government and has in recent days been buoyed by Trump’s plan to eject Palestinians from Gaza and threats against Hamas.
Arab leaders have this week stepped up efforts to mediate the standoff and curb Trump’s plan to resettle almost 2 million Palestinians in neighboring Jordan and Egypt and redevelop the war-torn Gaza Strip into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”
Egypt plans to host an emergency Arab summit on Feb. 27 after Trump extended an open invitation to President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi to discuss the matter at the White House.
In a statement released by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, the country said it would work with Trump to “achieve a comprehensive and just peace in the region by reaching a just settlement of the Palestinian cause.”
