Netanyahu vows to bring home all hostages ‘living and dead’

Ceasefire mediators have proposed a 70-day ceasefire and the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside some Palestinian prisoners.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a ceremony on the eve of Israel's Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers at the Yad LaBanim Memorial in Jerusalem. Picture; AP.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayahu has vowed to bring back all hostages, “living and dead”, as rescuers in Gaza said Israeli strikes killed at least 52 people.

Mr Netanyahu’s remarks came after a Palestinian source said that mediators proposed a 70-day ceasefire and the release of 10 Israeli hostages alongside some Palestinian prisoners, although US envoy Steve Witkoff later said Hamas had not agreed to a proposed deal.

“If we don’t achieve it today, we will achieve it tomorrow, and if not tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. We are not giving up,” Netanyahu said of the duty to free the captives.

“We intend to bring them all back, the living and the dead,” he added, but made no mention of a proposed deal.

His remarks came after a Hamas source said on Monday that the group had accepted a ceasefire proposal that would see 10 captives released.

A spokesman for Witkoff nonetheless told AFP that he disputed Hamas’s claim that the group had agreed to his proposed deal and quoted the envoy as saying: “What I have seen from Hamas is disappointing and completely unacceptable.”

Fighting meanwhile raged in Gaza, where civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said that an early-morning Israeli strike on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi school, where displaced people were sheltering, killed “at least 33, with dozens injured, mostly children”.

The Israeli military said it had “struck key terrorists who were operating within a Hamas and Islamic Jihad command and control centre embedded” in the area, adding that “numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians”.

Israel has stepped up a renewed offensive to destroy Hamas, drawing international condemnation as aid trickles in following a blockade since early March that has sparked severe food and medical shortages.

It has also triggered international criticism, with European and Arab leaders meeting in Spain calling for an end to the “inhumane” and “senseless” war, while humanitarian groups said the trickle of aid was not nearly enough.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares called for an arms embargo on Israel.

He also called for humanitarian aid to enter Gaza “massively, without conditions and without limits, and not controlled by Israel”, describing the territory as humanity’s “open wound”.

In Germany, Chancellor Friedrich Merz voiced unusually strong criticism of Israel, saying: “I no longer understand what the Israeli army is now doing in the Gaza Strip, with what goal.” The impact on Gazan civilians “can no longer be justified”, he added.

Nevertheless, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Berlin would continue selling weapons to Israel.

The Israeli military said on Monday that over “the past 48 hours, the (air force) struck over 200 targets throughout the Gaza Strip”.

It also said it had detected three projectiles launched from Gaza toward communities in Israel Monday, as the country prepared to celebrate Jerusalem Day, an annual event marking its capture of the city’s eastern sector in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

“Two projectiles fell in the Gaza Strip and one additional projectile was intercepted,” it said.

Later on Monday, it issued an evacuation order for areas of Khan Yunis, saying they had been the site of rocket launches.

Israel last week partially eased an aid blockade on Gaza that had exacerbated widespread shortages of food and medicine.

COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that coordinates civilian affairs in the Palestinian territories, said that “170 trucks … carrying humanitarian aid including food, medical equipment, and pharmaceutical drugs were transferred” into Gaza on Monday.

AFP