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As Israel and Hamas accuse each other of violating the cease-fire deal, Israel’s prime minister has vowed a return to “intense fighting” if hostages are not freed by Saturday.
As the fragile cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza is under threat of collapse, the fate of hostages who were to be released under the first stage of the deal’s terms has become ever more precarious.
Both Israel and Hamas have accused each other of violating terms of the first stage of the cease-fire agreement, now in its fourth week, and it remained uncertain whether the next exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners would proceed on Saturday as planned.
On Monday, Hamas said it was indefinitely delaying the release of more hostages. That prompted President Trump to warn that “all hell is going to break out” if they were not released by noon Saturday — a threat echoed on Tuesday by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who said “intense fighting” would resume in Gaza if the hostages were not freed by then.
Relatives of the hostages are determined not to let them get lost in the swirl of negotiations and confusion over whether the cease-fire agreement would survive into a second phase, especially after the most recently released hostages appeared to be emaciated when they were freed.
“There is probably not enough understanding of how serious the situation is,” Hanna Mastronov, the aunt of the hostage Yosef Haim Ohana, told Ynet, a centrist Israeli news outlet, on Wednesday. She said the family had recently received “a clear indication” that he was still alive.
