Netanyahu says half of the hostages held in Gaza are still alive – report

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

During a closed meeting of the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Sunday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told MKs that just half of the 97 hostages remaining in Gaza are still alive.

Of the hostages taken on October 7th, 33 have died after being taken as captives in Gaza.

“According to the information we have, half of the hostages in Gaza are alive,” he is quoted as saying by Army Radio.

Netanyahu said it was Hamas, not Israel’s government, that was to blame for the impasse in hostage release negotiation.

In addition, the Prime Minister said he is mulling his generals’ plans to seize northern Gaza.

Last week, retired Maj. Gen. Giora Eiland presented a plan to “change the reality on the ground” in Gaza.

“We have to tell the residents of north Gaza that they have one week to evacuate the territory, which then becomes a military zone, [a zone] in which every figure is a target and, most importantly, no supplies enter this territory,” General Eiland said.

In June, American and Israeli intelligence predicted that there may be as few as 50 hostages still left alive in Gaza, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The daily cited “mediators in the hostage talks and a U.S. official familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence” as sources.

Officially, on the Israeli side the IDF and Prime Minister’s Office declined to comment, and on the American end the Office of the Director of National Intelligence kept mum as well when asked for a response.

IDF spokesperson Daniel Hagari revealed that the IDF eliminated two terrorists who held the six murdered Israeli hostages whose bodies were recovered in late August.

The IDF retrieved the bodies of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Almog Sarusi, 25, Alexander Lobanov, 32, and Carmel Gat, 40, in Rafah.

They were shot in the head execution-style just two days before security forces discovered their bodies.

Hagari reported that “troops from the 162nd Division identified two terrorists emerging from an underground tunnel shaft in the Tel al-Sultan area and eliminated them during an encounter.”