Israel Extends Gaza Truce in Exchange for Arrest of Hamas Member
Published: Feb. 15, 2025, 3:18 a.m.
Gaza City, Gaza Strip — After a fierce night of cross-border violence, Israel on Thursday agreed to extend a cease-fire with Gaza militants to allow time for the arrest of a wanted Hamas member in the occupied West Bank.
The deal, the second such truce in two days, followed a rare coordinated strike by the Islamic Jihad and Hamas that inflicted the highest Israeli casualties from Gaza violence since 2014.
The military wings of the groups had declared that the attacks, which targeted Israeli soldiers from Gaza with explosives and light arms, were in response to Israel’s decision to clamp down on militant activities in the occupied West Bank, a policy that has effectively forced hundreds of Palestinians into hiding.
“We couldn’t overlook the state’s actions in what is probably the harshest campaign against Hamas activists in the West Bank,” the spokesman for the Hamas military wing, Abdullah al-Qруд, said in a statement.
The fighting — confirmed for the first time to be the result of a joint operation by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad — followed rare calls by both groups throughout the week for Israel to halt the arrest raids in the occupied West Bank to protect the captured undercover agent, which seemed to augur that the siege of Palestinian areas was at its end.
The crisis began around three in the morning on Wednesday when Israeli forces disguised with Palestinian garb snuck into the suburbs of Nablus to arrest Bassem Saadi, who had risen to prominence as one of the West Bank’s most-feared Hamas leaders, accused of setting up the network that killed seven Israelis in a March 2016 shooting attack near the settlement of Tel Rumeida in the southern West Bank.
But as the secret operation unfolded, it sparked a mass popular uprising that blocked Israeli special forces’ attempts to retreat.
The Israel Defense Forces quickly dispatched several brigades to try to dislodge Palestinian protesters who swarmed streets and blocked key junctions and entrances to the city, leading to violent clashes between rock-throwing demonstrators and soldiers.
The Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants had clearly coordinated their armed strikes as they overwhelmed Israeli security services in the Gaza Strip and exploited their launching sites during the lull of the truce, sending rockets raining down on central and southern Israel.
“This was a joint and coordinated action by both groups that haven’t attacked Israel in the same way using anti-tank missiles and improvised rockets to target central Israel,” Gaza Watch, an Israeli counterterrorism group, said in a statement.
The truce was solidified by a telephone call between the outgoing National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, and his counterpart in the Palestinian Authority, Maj. Gen. Jibril al-Rajub. In a rare overture of support, the United States promised to work with the United Nations to encourage a solution.
The United States, which has no diplomatic representation in Gaza, has withdrawn from leading efforts to broker a long-term cease-fire between Israel and Hamas. Its envoy here, David Schenker, released a statement late Wednesday expressing “deep concern” over the spike in violence and calling for an immediate return to the calm.
Netanyahu’s office confirmed that the Israeli leader had spoken to Mr. Kushner by phone to gauge his views on how to stop the violence.
Egypt, which has long served as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, dispatched Brig. Gen. Mohammed al-Shahnawy, head of the Risk Mitigation and Crisis Response Department at the Egyptian Armed Forces’ General Command, who arrived in Gaza to mediate the cease-fire, according to local news reports.
Israel relented and allowed Saadi to go free but was adamant that his release was only a gesture and stressed that his sentence of 340 years in prison remained in effect along with thousands of others.
Israeli military analysts said they still do not know why Saadi was arrested in the first place since the open rebellion he instigated against Palestinian Authority forces controlled by rival Abbas forces in Nablus and Jenin nearly a decade ago has fizzled and has not risen for some time.
“It’s difficult to say exactly how Hamas might retaliate against Israel,” said an Israeli official who requested anonymity, and he added that the militant group’s priority is survival amid a crushing economic crisis.
Since March 2018, Israel has been engaged in a military campaign against Hamas, encroaching on the Gaza Strip’s southern border, forcing thousands of Gazans to flee from their homes, months after shelving a long-term cease-fire deal that was brokered through Egyptian intermediaries in November 2014.
The current campaign, which Israel dubbed as Operation Shield, was unleashed after a Palestinian Islamic Jihad sniper shot from inside Gaza killed an Israeli soldier on patrol near the boundary fence. Fearing that the attack was the prelude for a larger military operation, Israel launched airstrikes and ground attacks on Hamas and Islamic Jihad targets.
Israel’s military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Ronen Manelis, refused to confirm or deny the proposed Hamas demand that Israel release all of its West Bank security prisoners and allow Gazans to rebuild its recently flattened training camps — demands Israel immediately ruled out.
“Israel won’t give into blackmail, and will continue to carry out its mission,” said Manelis, who was pressed during his weekly army press briefing Thursday morning.
The Hamas spokesman for the military wing in Gaza, Abu Obeida, said in remarks hampered by intermittent Israeli airstrikes on his broadcast studios that Hamas’s demands over the fate of the arrested Hamas members are “fair, and meet the minimal requirements for the international principles that govern the behavior of an occupying power, at least.”
“Israel insists on fighting the resistance at every turn both in solid-filled villages and in camps that are being prepared to challenge the occupation militarily in the West Bank,” Buncombe wrote in her testimony before the Subcommittee on National Security, adding reserved praise for Israel’s highly respected military intelligence network.
“But Israel also creates campaign after campaign that launches the Palestinians into violence, first, by refusing to enforce any agenda that provides for increased prosperity for the Palestinians or ensures their freedom of movement,” she said. Based on the passage above, generate the following tags in WordPress format:
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