In an eastern district of Gaza City– where the Israeli army has suffered its heaviest losses since the start of the war – in densely built-up streets that are still partly inhabited, Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot dead three Israeli hostages that had been held by Hamas, on Friday, December 15. The army seems to have been unaware of their presence. It has declared not knowing whether they had managed to escape their captors or whether those detainers had fled, leaving the hostages to their fates.
Two of them, Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz, had been captured on October 7 in Kfar Aza. This Israeli kibbutz extends over old farmland within sight of the inhabitants of Shujaiya, the vast district of the Palestinian city where they were being held. The third man, Samer Al-Talalka, was one of some 15 Bedouins employed in the Israeli farming communities around the Gaza enclave, who were indiscriminately abducted by the kibbutz's assailants.
On Friday evening, hundreds of demonstrators gathered in the center of Tel Aviv – and even in front of the Israeli army's headquarters – to call on the government to free the hostages "at any price." The deaths of the three young men have heightened the fears of Hamas captives' families, with no apparent negotiations underway for a new truce and prisoner exchanges.
This week, the Israeli press reported that Mossad chief David Barnea had offered to travel to Qatar to revive the talks. The government has denied having forbidden him to make this trip. Some of the hostages freed in November – more than 100, out of a total of 240 – have called out the government, sharing stories of their terror in the Gazan tunnels where they were held, under the Israeli army's bombings. However, the Israeli activists who have been calling on the government to make the release of hostages its top priority have appeared hesitant since December, no longer quite sure how to uphold their demands, and shaken – like all of Israel's population – by the growing military death toll: 119 soldiers have been killed.
Since the resumption of hostilities on November 30, the Israeli army has been conquering the eastern districts and historic center of Gaza City, as well as Khan Yunis in the enclave's south. It has suffered its heaviest losses in seven weeks of deployment, both in Shujaiya and in the northern suburb of Jabalia. On December 12, nine members of the Golani Brigade – including a battalion commander, a colonel and four other officers – were killed in an attack on a building complex in downtown Shujaiya, where intelligence had failed to detect a tunnel opening and a group of Hamas militiamen.
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