عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
Arab World

Biden Stresses to Netanyahu Urgency of Gaza Ceasefire

Displaced Palestinians travel on a cart after fleeing the western part of Khan Younis, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army, amid Israel- Hams conflict, in the central part of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 21, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem Purchase Licensing Rights
Displaced Palestinians travel on a cart after fleeing the western part of Khan Younis, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army, amid Israel- Hams conflict, in the central part of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 21, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem Purchase Licensing Rights
TT
TT

Biden Stresses to Netanyahu Urgency of Gaza Ceasefire

Displaced Palestinians travel on a cart after fleeing the western part of Khan Younis, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army, amid Israel- Hams conflict, in the central part of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 21, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem Purchase Licensing Rights
Displaced Palestinians travel on a cart after fleeing the western part of Khan Younis, following an evacuation order by the Israeli army, amid Israel- Hams conflict, in the central part of Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, August 21, 2024. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem Purchase Licensing Rights

US President Joe Biden, in a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday, stressed the urgent need to conclude a Gaza ceasefire-for-hostages deal and pointed to upcoming Cairo talks as crucial, the White House said.

Their call followed US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's whirlwind trip to the Middle East that ended on Tuesday without an agreement between Israel and Hamas militants on a truce in the Palestinian enclave.

Negotiators who have struggled for months to conclude a ceasefire deal plan to meet in the coming days in Cairo.

"The president stressed the urgency of bringing the ceasefire and hostage release deal to closure and discussed upcoming talks in Cairo to remove any remaining obstacles," a White House statement about the call said.

According to Reuters, the statement said Biden and Netanyahu also discussed US efforts to support Israel "against all threats from Iran, including its proxy terrorist groups Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, to include ongoing defensive US military deployments."

Iran has vowed retaliation over the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran on July 31, which is blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied that it was behind the killing.

The United States has ordered a guided missile submarine be deployed to the Middle East and ordered the Abraham Lincoln strike group to accelerate its deployment to the region to be on hand to bolster Israel's defense.

Blinken and mediators from Egypt and Qatar have pinned their hopes on a US "bridging proposal" aimed at narrowing the gaps between the two sides in the 10-month-old Gaza war.

"President Biden spoke with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to discuss the ceasefire and hostage release deal and diplomatic efforts to de-escalate regional tensions," a White House statement said earlier.

Most Viewed

 
 
Arab World

How Israel Relied on Complex Intelligence, AI to Find Hostages in Gaza

 A woman walks past photos of hostages who were kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack (Reuters)
 A woman walks past photos of hostages who were kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack (Reuters)
TT
TT

How Israel Relied on Complex Intelligence, AI to Find Hostages in Gaza

 A woman walks past photos of hostages who were kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack (Reuters)
 A woman walks past photos of hostages who were kidnapped in the deadly October 7 attack (Reuters)

In a complex intelligence operation, the Israeli army has recovered this week the bodies of six hostages taken to Gaza, reflecting the constant progress in gathering information to find hostages since the October 7 attacks.
It took Israeli combat engineers hours of nighttime digging deep inside a 650-foot long tunnel in Khan Younis to unearth what they were looking for. The bodies of four men and one woman, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.
The discovery came after a Palestinian detained by Israeli forces in Gaza told the soldiers where to look.
“It's hard to get the smell out of your head,” said a reservist with the military's 98th division who took part in the operation. “It's also psychological because you know it's the smell of a human being.”
In the haze after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack, Israel didn't know which of the thousands of people missing were kidnapped or dead.
More than 10 months later, and after a military operation that has killed thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, Israel began using modern technology and artificial intelligence to piece together the puzzle.
The WSJ report said Israel has obtained troves of valuable Hamas data as it has unearthed laptops, cellphones and documents from Gaza, using artificial intelligence. And with American help, it has boosted its signals intelligence.
Also, human intelligence has also been key—recovered from Palestinians arrested by Israel inside Gaza and others who provide information to Israeli forces.
“These bodies were there for a few months, and it took time for us to put the picture together and conduct such a mission,” said Israel Ziv, a retired Israeli general who gets briefed by military officials, referring to the operation in July.
Also, Karine Nahon, an Israeli information scientist from Reichman University in central Israel, established a team of volunteers who scanned social media and developed algorithms to comb through 200,000 videos to identify missing people. The team then shared their findings with intelligence officials. “In the beginning nobody worked with us,” Nahon said. “The state wasn't there.”
According to Ofer Merin, director-general of Shaare Zedek, a couple of weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks, a committee of health experts was tasked with viewing classified intelligence and determining whether hostages were dead or alive to notify families and inform negotiations.
The committee so far has determined that more than 40 hostages are dead based on security-camera footage in Israel.
Another obstacle is that hostages are spread throughout the enclave and are moved around to make locating them harder, according to WSJ.
Released hostage Aviva Siegel told the Journal that she was held in 13 different locations both above and below ground during her 51 days in Gaza.
And while rescuing hostages alive is considered very challenging, locating captives' bodies can also be complex since they are often hidden.
In December, the bodies of two hostages were found in garbage bags in a tunnel in northern Gaza, according to Orin Gantz, the mother of one of the hostages.
Even when Israel has all the intelligence in place, it doesn't always choose to launch a rescue mission.
Recovering the bodies of the dead hostages remains a major challenge because Hamas is deliberately hiding them in multiple and complex locations.
Therefore, Israel is facing challenges to recover hostages, whether alive or dead, under extremely difficult security and political circumstances.