Editorial
The Israeli military offensive on Gaza has resumed because the negotiations with Hamas have collapsed. The terrorists, according to Tel Aviv, refused to release a group of women still held hostage, aged between 20 and 30. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas violated the agreement by refusing to return 15 women and 2 children.
The stories of the freed paint a terrible picture of the treatment they suffered during captivity. Thomas Hand, father of Emily, a little girl with dual Israeli and Irish citizenship, says that his daughter's head was full of lice, and the little girl was forced into silence for fifty days by her kidnappers, now she is afraid to express herself out loud .
Adina Moshe, 72, freed after fifty days of captivity in the Hamas tunnels under the Gaza Strip, struggles to get used to the light after being kept in the dark. Some Thai hostages report that terrorists provide little food to prisoners, while Israeli captives are treated even worse, suffering torture using electrified wires. Chilling testimonies describe Jewish children subjected to burns on their legs with the muffler of a motorcycle, marked to be recognized in case of escape.
The families of the 130 prisoners still in the hands of Hamas are desperate, while the situation is further complicated by the reticence and falsehoods of the terrorist group. The families called for an urgent meeting with Netanyahu, and a demonstration took place in Tel Aviv with tens of thousands of people demanding the return of all the hostages. However, the situation remains uncertain, with Hamas claiming to have handed over all the women and children and that only men and soldiers remain hostage.
The ruthless management of the hostages by Hamas, combined with the complexity of the situation with other organizations such as Islamic Jihad, therefore makes the fate of the 130 prisoners still hidden in the tunnels and homes uncertain. The treatment of prisoners is set to worsen with the lack of room for negotiations, while violent attacks by the Israeli army have resumed.
Israel's military offensive continues
The full-intensity military offensive is expected to continue until early next year. The raids move towards Khan Younis, where the undisputed leader of Hamas is apparently hiding, Yahya Sinwar. The other targets are Marwan Issa and the military commander Mohammed Deif. Larger military maneuvers should be followed by transition and stabilization.
The second phase of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, the one after the seven-day ceasefire, is as brutal as the first. Planes hit four hundred targets in the 24 hours after the war resumed, says the IDF, and the number of Palestinian deaths has reached above fifteen thousand, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health.
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