The head of the Israeli National Security Council, Tzachi Hanegbi, said that the release of prisoners held by Hamas in Gaza will not begin before Friday, November 24, 2023, after there was talk of starting a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Thursday morning, November 23. November.

At dawn on Wednesday, February 22, the Qatari Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that a humanitarian truce agreement had been reached in the Gaza Strip, between Israel and Hamas, through joint mediation with Egypt and the United States.

Meanwhile, Hanegbi came out late at night in a statement in which he said, “Negotiations for the release of the abductees are progressing and continuing all the time. The release of the abductees will begin according to the original agreement between the parties, (but) not before Friday.”

For its part, the Kan channel, affiliated with the official Israeli Broadcasting Corporation, quoted an official in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office as saying: “No one said that there would be a release of the kidnapped people on Thursday except in the media.”

He added: "It was also reported in the media that Israel obtained a list of the names of those released, but this did not actually happen."

He continued: "So we have to make it clear that they are not scheduled to be released before Friday, because the families of the kidnapped are in a state of extreme uncertainty."

According to the source, “the war will continue tomorrow, Thursday, as usual.”

Kan quoted an unnamed political official familiar with the details as saying: “It does not seem at this stage that the difficulties will lead to an explosion in the talks, but rather to a delay in the signing. Hamas has not signed yet.”

Earlier on Wednesday evening, the Israeli Broadcasting Corporation said that moves to release prisoners in the Gaza Strip will begin at ten in the morning local time every day.

She explained, quoting an unnamed political official, that “it is possible that the ceasefire in the fighting will last more than four days, during which a larger number of kidnapped people will be released.”

Source: Arabic Post