The “green light” for her resumption of negotiations concerning the release of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli war cabinet issued today.

The war cabinet that met for four hours on Wednesday night, according to Israeli media, approved by a majority the decision to continue efforts to reach an agreement.

Also, an Egyptian source in Qatar-owned Al-Araby Al-Jadeed claimed that Egyptian officials had begun efforts to renew efforts at negotiations.

In addition, the same source reported that an Israeli delegation is visiting Cairo to discuss with their Egyptian counterparts the security agreements between the two countries and the opening of the Rafah crossing.

At the same time, the Israeli army carried out bombings today in the northern and southern parts of the Palestinian enclave.

The decision to resume these talks comes after a video was broadcast showing Israeli female recruits being kidnapped by militants of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas on October 7 in their unprecedented attack on Israel that sparked the war.

The families of the five recruits held hostage in Gaza yesterday, Wednesday, gave permission for the video to be broadcast.

In this excerpt from video taken by Hamas fighters, the families say, the young women, some with blood on their faces, are seen sitting down in their pajamas with their hands tied behind their backs.

“The images reveal the violent, humiliating and traumatic treatment these girls suffered on the day of their abduction,” the Hostage Families Forum said in a statement.

“Never again”

These images “will strengthen my resolve to fight with all my might until the elimination of Hamas, to guarantee that what we saw tonight will never happen again,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu responded in a post on his Telegram account. , before his war cabinet met late last night.

The prime minister “instructed the team of negotiators to return to the negotiating table to secure the return of the hostages,” according to a senior Israeli government official.

In early May, indirect negotiations between Hamas and Israel, mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the US, failed to reach an agreement on a ceasefire in Gaza, which would have been linked to the release of hostages held by the Palestinian Islamist movement. and Palestinians held by Israel.

Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel killed more than 1,170 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures. Of the 252 hostages taken in Gaza at the time, 124 are still being held in the Palestinian enclave, of whom 37 are believed to be dead, according to the Israeli military.

In retaliation for the attack, Netanyahu vowed to eliminate Hamas and his army launched an offensive in the Gaza Strip, where Hamas, which is considered a terrorist organization by Israel, the EU and the US, came to power in 2007.

At least 35,709 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians, have lost their lives in this attack, according to figures from the Hamas Health Ministry in Gaza.

Airstrikes and artillery fire were heard overnight in the Gaza Strip, mainly in Rafah in the south and Jabalia in the north, according to AFP reporters, medics and eyewitnesses, who also reported heavy shelling in Gaza City.

The Civil Protection of the Gaza Strip announced that 26 people were killed in Gaza City by two Israeli airstrikes early today.

Sixteen people were killed in a strike on their home, while another ten died in the second strike that targeted a mosque and a school, Civil Protection spokesman Mahmoud Basal said.

In Jabalia, the Israeli military announced that it “targeted several Hamas terrorists in strikes on military infrastructure used to store weapons.”

In Nuseirat, in the central part of the enclave, children were examining the ruins of a house destroyed by an Israeli airstrike this morning.

“When I saw the flames, I was in the school which has been turned into a shelter, and I said ‘the poor were hit by the rocket’, not knowing that it was actually my husband, his first wife and their children,” Fatima said. Hatat.

Aid delivery is prevented

In Rafah, Israeli forces, which began ground operations there on May 7, displacing 800,000 people, according to the UN, continue to operate in the districts of Brazil and Sabura, according to the army.

Following the deployment on the same day of the Israeli army on the Palestinian side of the Rafah border crossing, Israelis and Egyptians blamed each other for the paralysis of this passage through which the main part of the fuel necessary for the operation of hospitals and humanitarian logistics passed.

Deliveries are also largely blocked at crossings on the Israeli side of Kerem Shalom and Erez, according to aid agencies. Aid is also blocked on the Egyptian side of the Rafah crossing.

The Israeli military announced today, however, that 371 pallets of humanitarian aid, including food, entered the Gaza Strip yesterday, Wednesday, through the temporary jetty built on the enclave’s coast by the US military.

Sources: Jerusalem Post, APE