TEL AVIV – Israel will not agree to a ceasefire deal with the Gaza-ruling Hamas terror group if the bodies of the two missing soldiers are not returned, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said. Netanyahu on Sunday met with the families
The mother of an IDF soldier who was killed during the 2014 Gaza war last week condemned the UN’s “painful and brutal silence” regarding her son’s fate.
TEL AVIV – The Iron Dome air defense system has been deployed in central Israel, the IDF said on Monday night, amid increased tensions between the country and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza since the army destroyed an attack tunnel built by the terror group last month.
TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that any terror groups plotting attacks against Israel will be dealt with harshly.
TEL AVIV – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday announced that Israel would hold on to the bodies of terrorists killed during last week’s tunnel blast, a move that Israeli lawmakers said would help in a potential exchange for the bodies of slain IDF soldiers held in Gaza.
Hamas has accepted an Egyptian proposal for a prisoner swap with Israel and is awaiting Jerusalem’s response to the offer, the terror group’s leader in the Gaza Strip, Yahya Sinwar, said Thursday night, according to Channel 2 news.
NEW YORK – U.S. Jewish groups alongside their Israeli counterparts have called for a pre-Yom Kippur protest to be held Thursday outside the Qatari embassy in Washington, DC to demand that the Gulf state pressure terror group Hamas to release the remains of two IDF soldiers killed during the conflict with Israel in 2014.
TEL AVIV – Jason Greenblatt, President Donald Trump’s special representative to the Middle East, returned to Israel Sunday night for the second time in a month, a White House official said.
TEL AVIV – Amid Arabic-language reports that Israel and Gaza-based terror group Hamas are heading toward another prisoner swap deal, Education Minister Naftali Bennett on Sunday called on the government not to release “live terrorists” for the bodies of dead soldiers.
TEL AVIV – Human Rights Watch (HRW) slammed the Gaza-based terror group Hamas on Tuesday for holding two Israeli citizens who are believed to suffer from mental illness and demanded their immediate release.
A senior Hamas official confirmed Wednesday to The Times of Israel that Qatar and Egypt are involved in mediating between his organization and Israel, but stressed that Hamas will not even begin to talk about releasing Israeli civilians it has detained along with the remains of two IDF soldiers unless Israel first releases dozens of Palestinians it is holding.
The Security Cabinet on Sunday ruled that it would not release to their families the bodies of Hamas militants killed during attacks on Israelis but would instead bury them, the government said.
TEL AVIV – The parents of a slain Israeli soldier whose body is being held captive by Hamas are demanding the United Nations and U.S. “take responsibility” to recover his remains, after the Gaza-based terror group abducted their son during a U.S. and UN-brokered ceasefire in the 2014 summer conflict.
Shortly after the Security Cabinet on Wednesday approved the reconciliation deal with Turkey, a senior Hamas official claimed that Turkey is currently mediating a prisoner swap between the Palestinian terror organization and Israel.
The families of two soldiers whose remains are held in the Gaza Strip on Monday condemned the Israeli government for failing to secure the release of their sons’ bodies as part of the rapprochement deal with Turkey.
Hamas on Friday publicly acknowledged for the first time that it was holding four Israelis: two Israeli citizens who crossed into Gaza on their own accord and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014’s Gaza war. The group published photos of the four: slain soldiers Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, 29-year-old Avraham Mengistu, and a Bedouin-Israeli citizen whose name has not been released for publication.
The Islamist militant Hamas movement on Sunday raised the prospect of exchanging an Israeli soldier declared dead in the territory’s 2014 war in return for Palestinian prisoners. Abu Obeida, spokesman for Hamas’s military arm, the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, said that
The Palestinian terrorist Hamas organization told The Times of Israel on Sunday evening that it is willing to reveal information about two IDF soldiers, whose bodies it is believed to be holding, if Israel releases some of its operatives currently