Israel might let Oct. 7 planner go free
Reported offer: Exile in exchange for hostages
Israel is willing to allow Oct. 7 attack mastermind Yahya Sinwar and other top Hamas leaders in Gaza to flee into exile in exchange for the release of all remaining militant-held hostages and an end to Hamas rule in the enclave, NBC News reported, citing multiple Israeli officials it did not name.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed as recently as this week to continue fighting until Hamas leadership is killed. Israel says Sinwar and Mohammed Deif, leader of the Hamas military wing, directed the rampage that killed 1,200 people in Israel border communities. Over 240 others were kidnapped and spirited away to Gaza, and more than 100 of them were released during a weeklong November cease-fire.
Two sources familiar with discussions inside the Israeli government told NBC that other proposals Israelis raised with U.S. officials included replacing Hamas with hand-picked civilian leaders. The U.S. has lobbied for a revamped Palestinian Authority, which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, to take control of Gaza.
The U.S., Qatar and Egypt have been working to broker a cease-fire and longterm peace plan since the war began. Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected a Hamas-proposed cease-fire plan that would include the release of the remaining hostages and hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails, withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Gaza Strip and an end to the war.
Former hostages expressed concern that Netanyahu’s hard-line stance would doom the 100-plus living captives still held in Gaza. “If you continue in this approach of seeking the collapse of Hamas, there won’t be any hostages to free,” said Adina Moshe, who was freed during a November truce.
At least 27,840 Palestinians have been killed and 67,317 have been wounded in Israeli strikes on Gaza since Oct. 7, the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says. Israeli officials say about 10,000 of them were Hamas militants and blame civilian deaths on Hamas using them as human shields.
Israeli airstrikes in the Gaza Strip early Thursday killed over a dozen people in Rafah, on the mostly sealed border with Egypt where more than half of the area’s population has fled. Rafah is also the main entry point for humanitarian aid. Egypt has warned that any ground operation there or mass displacement across the border would undermine its four-decade-old peace treaty with Israel.
Alarm expressed over Rafah siege
International aid organizations have warned that any major operation in Rafah would compound what is already a humanitarian catastrophe in the besieged coastal enclave.
“If they aren’t killed in the fighting, Palestinian children, women and men will be at risk of dying by starvation or disease,” said Bob Kitchen of the International Rescue Committee. “There will no longer be a single ‘safe’ area for Palestinians to go to.”
The overnight strikes killed at least 13 people, including two women and five children, according to the Kuwaiti Hospital, which received the bodies. At the scene of one of the strikes, residents used their cellphone flashlights as they dug through the rubble with pickaxes and their bare hands.
“I wish we could collect their whole bodies instead of just pieces,” said Mohammed Abu Habib, a neighbor who witnessed the strike.
The daily toll Israel’s military operations are taking on innocent civilians remains too high, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a briefing in Tel Aviv late Wednesday. Blinken said that, while in Israel, he raised “profound concerns about actions and rhetoric, including from government officials, that inflame tensions,” jeopardize international support and add to Israel’s security concerns. Blinken acknowledged that Israelis were “dehumanized in the most horrific way” by the October Hamas attack and that the hostages seized by the militants continue to be mistreated.
“But that cannot be a license to dehumanize others,” Blinken said. “The overwhelming majority of people in Gaza had nothing to do with the attacks of Oct. 7. ... They’re mothers and fathers, sons and daughters (who) want to earn a decent living, send their kids to school, have a normal life. That’s who they are; that’s what they want. And we cannot, we must not lose sight of that. We cannot, we must not lose sight of our common humanity.”
President Joe Biden will meet with Jordan’s King Abdullah II in Washington on Monday to mark 75 years of diplomatic relations and discuss the war, humanitarian assistance and a long-term, two-state solution to the conflict, the White House said in a statement.
Iraq sharply rebukes US for killing militant leader
The U.S. drone strike that killed an Iraqi-based militant leader was a “blatant assassination” that showed no regard for international law, the Iraqi government said in a statement Thursday. The strike blew up a car in a Baghdad neighborhood late Wednesday, killing a commander of the Kataib Hezbollah militia responsible for planning and participating in attacks on American troops in the region, the U.S. military said.
The Associated Press reported the commander, identified as Wissam Muhammad Sabir Al-Saadi − known as Abu Baqir Al-Saadi − may have been one of three people killed in the strike. A statement from U.S. Central Command only mentioned one fatality and said no civilians were harmed.
Maj. Gen. Yehia Rasool, spokesman for the Iraqi government, said the strike violated Iraqi sovereignty, and showed disregard for the safety and lives of Iraqi civilians.
“This trajectory compels the Iraqi government more than ever to terminate the mission of this coalition, which has become a factor for instability and threatens to entangle Iraq in the cycle of conflict,” Rasool said.
U.S. forces conducted self-defense strikes against two Houthi mobile antiship cruise missiles being prepared for launch against ships in the Red Sea, Central Command announced Thursday. The missiles “presented an imminent threat to U.S. Navy ships and merchant vessels in the region.”
Contributing: Tom Vanden Brook, USA TODAY; The Associated Press