Painful day for Israel – and questions for the Israeli government

It is stirring a lot of emotion for the families of the Israeli captives. For the Bibas family and the Lifshitz family, these are very painful moments.

There’s a lot of blame to go around, especially directed at the Israeli government, and at the Israeli prime minister, who was regularly accused of wasting time. This deal was on the table, it could have been reached in July or August of last year, and that is not lost on anyone in Israel.

One of the identities has been confirmed, that of Oded Lifshitz. But there is still a lot of work to do forensically, not just confirming the identities of the captives but how they died – is the account of the Palestinian groups accurate, and if so, how many more Israeli captives were killed by Israeli bombardment as those groups claim?

_{Israelis react as the bodies of four captives, including a woman and her two children, are handed over by Hamas to the Red Cross in Gaza, at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv}


Netanyahu’s office says Lifshitz killed while in captivity

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office has claimed that Oded Lifshitz, the 83-year-old captive whose body was among those handed over today, was killed by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group while in captivity.

Lifshitz’s body was brought to the Forensic Institute in Israel for his identification and to assess the circumstances of his death.

On Wednesday, the Palestinian group said the captive was killed during Israeli strikes in Gaza.

 
Hamas says it tried to respect ‘sanctity’ of Israeli captives’ bodies in handover ceremony

Hamas has said in a statement issued after the handover of four Israeli captives’ bodies in Gaza that Israel did not respect their lives while they were alive, but the group sought “to respect the sanctity of the dead” in the handover ceremony held in Khan Younis.

The group also said that even when they were alive the captives were treated humanely and provided with whatever was available, but the Israeli army killed them along with their captors.

“The criminal Netanyahu weeps over the bodies of his prisoners in a blatant attempt to evade responsibility for killing them in front of his audience,” the statement said.

“To the families of Bibas and Lifshitz, we would have preferred the return of your sons alive, but your leaders chose to kill them and with them 17,881 Palestinian children,” it added.

Hamas also warned that “the exchange is the only way to return the captives alive and trying to retrieve them by force or returning to war will only result in losses.”

Israeli group calls for decisive action: occupation, expulsion, and settlement in Gaza

The Nachala movement, a right-wing, ultranationalist group, has planned a demonstration on February 27 to call for the expulsion of Palestinians from Gaza and the construction of illegal settlements there.

“We must return to fighting now and this time decisively! With a clear goal: occupation, expulsion and settlement!” read a message on the group’s Facebook page.

Pro-settlement groups have been reinvigorated since the establishment of a far-right government in Israel whose members include settlers such as Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich.

In October, Smotrich called for the re-establishment of Jewish settlements in the Palestinian enclave while then-National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said that “encouraging emigration” of Palestinian residents of the territory was the best and “most ethical” solution to the conflict, even as human rights groups label that plan as ethnic cleansing.

Israeli Knesset member suggests taking part of Egypt’s Sinai for Gaza’s Palestinians

Tally Gotliv, a member of Netanyahu’s Likud Party, offered the idea as a “suggestion”, despite Egypt’s repeated opposition to the idea of hosting Palestinians ethnically cleansed from Gaza.

“I propose allocating a part of Sinai in the Rafah area and establishing a town for Gaza residents,” Gottlieb said. “A solution can be considered where the United States rents land from Egypt to accomodate Gaza residents."

Two pro-Palestinian activists wounded in attack outside Israeli expo in New York

Activists who demonstrated outside an Israeli real estate expo in Brooklyn on Tuesday said that they were attacked by “Zionist mobs” after they left the area.

In a post on X, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation, Pal-Awda, said it organised a protest that “peacefully protested the illegal sale of stolen Palestinian land at a real estate event”, but that Zionists “spat on, kicked, harassed, maced and even physically struck and punched” some of the protest attendees.

It said one group of protesters, including “several Jewish allies” were approached by several assailants, including a “Zionist with a metal stick”. The attackers encircled the protesters, threatened them and ultimately assaulted them, resulting in “two young men” being taken to hospital.

A website advertising the Getter Group Israel Real Estate Expo in Borough Park, Brooklyn said the event on Tuesday promised to offer opportunities to hear from developers “about the latest projects going up in all parts of the country”.

An article in The Jerusalem Post, which was listed as a partner by the event organisers, said the “expo website didn’t offer holdings in disputed territories, but Getter does seek out real estate on behalf of its clients depending on their requests, which could include settlements”.

Many in Gaza face ‘existential threat’

The Gaza Strip is facing multi-layered problems triggered by months of war and devastation. The entire enclave is either damaged or destroyed.

Everywhere I go in Gaza, I keep searching for intact homes or standing buildings. So far, I have failed to find any.

There are people who have returned to where their homes were in Beit Lahiya in order to set up tents.

However, the closest water sources are far – it’s a long journey. Water is essential and without it, sustaining life has become a real problem.

In the absence of international intervention, this problem will continue to unfold with each passing day. The hundreds of thousands of people wanting to return to this area face an existential threat.


_{A drone view shows Palestinians walking at a street market near buildings damaged and destroyed during the Israeli offensive, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City, February 17}

Netanyahu demands Hamas exile from Gaza: Report

An Israeli media report says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made new demands in negotiations on the second phase of the ongoing ceasefire deal signed with Hamas.

According to Israel’s Channel 13, Netanyahu is demanding Hamas leadership to be exiled abroad, Gaza to be demilitarised and Israel to maintain security control over the enclave.

These were not included in the deal signed in mid-January. As per that accord, Hamas would have released all the remaining captives and Israeli troops were to withdraw from the Strip.

Trump ‘very clear’ about Gaza ethnic cleansing plan

We’ve been seeing this since 2016: President Trump says a whole bunch of things, and then a lot of his deputies or spokespersons or secretaries walk it back or walk it down, climbing down whatever tree Trump climbed by his provocative statements, because that’s what he tends to do.

But none of it is coincidental. None of it is by mistake. All of this is, I don’t want to say calculated, but instinctive, and repetitive, and continuous, and consistent on the part of the president, to be saying things that are outrageous, and damning, and then to start walking them down. It is what they call his “opening bid”.

And his opening bid has been for the people of Gaza to leave. When he was asked, will they come back? He said, “No, no need for them to come back because they will leave happily wherever they are going.”

So Trump has been very clear about the idea of ethnic cleansing. Now, his lieutenant wants to walk back his provocation.

Abbas reiterates call for ‘territorial unity of Palestine’

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas spoke on Thursday at the opening of the 12th session of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, in Ramallah.

“We will continue working to establish a ceasefire, guarantee the flow of humanitarian aid, and ensure that the State of Palestine assumes responsibility in Gaza, all while preserving the territorial unity of Palestine,” he said.

Abbas noted that the vast majority of the international community has also rejected Trump’s proposal to forcibly displace Palestinians to Egypt and Jordan.

“We will continue our efforts in international forums, working with both our Arab and international allies, to push for the recognition of Palestine as a full member state of the United Nations,” Abbas said.

The Palestinian president is an increasingly unpopular figure among his own people, in part for cooperating with Israeli forces on security issues, and has been accused of being ineffective in countering Israel.

Ugh, we're back to bombing busses, regressed back to the eighties.

Three buses explode in Israel’s Bat Yam in suspected ‘terrorist’ attack: Police

The three explosions took place on empty buses in separate car parks in the city, which lies south of Tel Aviv.

Details are few and far between at the moment, but the police added that they were looking for suspects, and believe that the incidents could be part of a “nationalist” operation.

Unexploded suspected devices found in Bat Yam: Report

The Israeli Broadcasting Authority is reporting that two suspected devices have also been found near Bat Yam, and that light rail services have been suspended.

Meanwhile, Israel’s National Federation of Bus Drivers’ Organisations has told bus drivers to stop driving and “conduct a thorough inspection of the buses while displaying maximum vigilance”.

Yedioth Ahronoth has reported that the first two explosions took place 400 metres (1,300 feet) away from each other, while the third occurred in a car park 4km (2.5 miles) away.

Israeli security suspects Palestinian motives

There have been three separate explosions in two areas in the Bat Yam area, south of Tel Aviv – an area that is quite densely populated.

The Israeli police says it suspects that there are nationalistic motivations. That means that the Israeli security forces suspect that Palestinian groups are behind these attacks … that these are activities motivated by Palestinian groups attacking an Israeli target because of Israeli occupation practices.

And let’s also remember that Israel has been conducting the largest-scale military offensive in the occupied West Bank since 1967. More than 44,000 Palestinians have been displaced in Tulkarem and Jenin, which are the closest to the area that we are talking about.

The Israeli security forces have been on high alert. These explosions are raising a lot of questions about how this could have happened and whether they are coordinated.

More on bus explosions

We are getting more information on the explosions in and near Bat Yam:

Israel doesn’t have ‘any sense of security’

We shouldn’t make anything of [these bus explosions] until we get more information. A lot of what I have heard thus far is, we don’t know this, we don’t know that, and we don’t know everything. It’s really very hard to build any synthesis on the basis of some scattered information half an hour into the incident.

For the time being, we don’t know much. But what we do know, whether the details are out or not, is how frantic the Israelis are knowing all too well that […] they don’t have any sense of security.

This is certain. Regardless of what just happened today, the idea is that their instinctive reflection, their immediate reaction to something like this is that “this is more of the same, we cannot feel secure in our country, we cannot feel secure in our own cities, we cannot feel secure in our own public transportation”.

All the promises that have been made by Israeli leaders that they’ll bring security to Israel … I’m not talking about the specifics of this case, but Israel continues to live in constant fear, in constant anxiety, in constant insecurity despite months of war, despite a year and a half of genocide, and despite dozens of wars that Israel has fought in the name of security.

Main events on February 20th

Israel pledges military response as bus bombing investigation underway

The Israeli police and other security services are still conducting an investigation into three separate explosions that targeted buses in the larger Tel Aviv area. No injuries resulted from those explosions.

Fingers in Israel are pointing to the northern occupied West Bank, particularly Tulkarem, where a large-scale Israeli offensive has been going on for almost a month, displacing thousands of Palestinians.

It is the largest military offensive on the area since the occupation began in 1967.

No leads have been shared with the public and no official claim of responsibility by any Palestinian group.

The Israeli prime minister is saying that he is following up on this issue, receiving updates from the security establishment, considering this to be a very grave attack, a very concerning attack.

I'm not a fan of conspiracy theories, but this does reek of a false flag operation. I wouldn't put it past Hamas / PIJ to do something like this, but they have never shown to be this incompetent in execution. And for what reason? Just after Hamas signals they want to commit to an expedited exchange deal of hostages and move on to phase 2 of the ceasefire. Why would Hamas shoot themselves in the foot now?

Nah the only ones to gain from this 'attack' are Netanyahu and Trump. 

Israel says body of captive is not Shiri Bibas, accuses Hamas of ‘violation of utmost severity’

The Israeli military has accused Hamas of committing a “violation of utmost severity”, after it said forensic tests revealed that one of four bodies returned by the Palestinian group on Thursday was not that of captive Shiri Bibas.

“During the identification process, it was determined that the additional body received is not that of Shiri Bibas, and no match was found for any other hostage. This is an anonymous, unidentified body,” the military said in a statement.

The Israeli military added that it had identified Ariel Bibas, who it said was “four years old at the time of his death”, as well as Kfir Bibas, who it said was “ten months old at the time of his death”.

The Israeli military did not comment on the fourth body returned, that of journalist and peace activist Oded Lifshitz.

Again, why would Hamas (intentionally) return the wrong body. What could they possibly have to gain by this kind of 'deception'. The most likely is, hostages and others got killed in an air strike, either directly or indirectly trapped in the rubble. Without ways of identification, mix ups are bound to happen.

Everything feels engineered to prevent any movement towards phase 2 of the (not really a) ceasefire.