Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 84?

Israel's security cabinet discussed on Thursday a Qatari proposal that would see the release of more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. The proposal is still in its early stages as of Friday.

According to the proposal's outline, the first phase will include a humanitarian exchange deal that will include the release of 40-50 hostages in exchange for a complete ceasefire of a few weeks, according to three senior Israeli officials.

The second phase is expected to be more complex, its details are not yet completely clear, but the direction is to arrange a withdrawal of IDF troops from the area.

Hamas 'agrees in principle' to restart hostage release negotiation

Despite the cabinet discussing the proposal, neither Israel nor Hamas have yet responded to the offer. However, a report from Walla! stated that the Hamas terror organization "agrees in principle" to resume such negotiations.

Senior Israeli officials said that this is only an initial message and Israel hopes to get clarification on it at the end of the week, the Walla! report said. 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chairs a cabinet meeting at the Kirya military base, in Tel Aviv, Israel, December 24, 2023 (credit: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS)

However, one official said that it was a positive development because, for the first time since the previous agreement, Hamas is signaling that it is ready to resume negotiations. "We have moved from a frozen standstill to just a very cold situation," said the official.

Another senior Israeli official said that Israel has not yet received a detailed proposal from the Qataris and is waiting to hear more details. "In any case, the gaps are still big," he said.

Sirens sounded across northern Israel on Friday afternoon amid suspected hostile aircraft intrusions, as the IDF said it was carrying out a widespread assault on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon.

The IDF struck a Hezbollah military compound and other infrastructures in addition to several launchpads placed along the border. Israeli forces also struck an anti-tank cell and a launcher used to fire rockets at northern Israeli border towns.

This is a developing story.

11 leaders of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in an airstrike targeting Damascus International Airport on Thursday evening, Saudi media reported the following morning.

This is a developing story.

Four people were injured during a suspected ramming attack on Hebron Hills, initials report indicated on Friday afternoon. The terrorist was neutralized at the scene, according to reports. 

Security forces and police are on their way to the scene.

Magen David Adom reported that four pedestrians were hit by a vehicle on Route 60 just north of Otniel near the Adirim Junction, with one in moderate condition and three in light condition. 

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant spoke with US Secretary of State Lloyd Austin to discuss Israel's ongoing campaign to oust Hamas and preparations for a post-Hamas Gaza, the Department of Defense said on Friday.

Austin reiterated the US's resolve to ensure Hamas is no longer a threat to Israel but emphasized Israel must continue to protect Gaza's civilians.

The two defense chiefs also discussed threats to regional security, including Hezbollah, attacks against US forces in Iraq and Syria, Yemen's Houthi rebels, and the ongoing attacks in the Red Sea.

For the first time since Israeli ground operations began against Hamas in Gaza, soldiers of the 5th "Sharon" (Reserve) Infantry Brigade are operating in Gaza’s Khuza’a, in Khan Yunis which was the base of many of the terrorists who attacked Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7.

Named "Operation Oz and Nir," soldiers, working alongside IDF engineering battalions, have eliminated Hamas terrorists and attacked several significant terror targets, including tunnel entrances, tunnel shafts, and rocket launch positions.

Dozens of tunnel shafts were discovered, the IDF announced on Friday, and large caches of weapons including Kalashnikovs, grenades, mines, rocket launchers, and RPGs were found.

Weapons and uniforms located by the IDF's 5th Brigade, southern Gaza, December 29, 2023 (credit: IDF SPOKESPERSON'S UNIT)

Engineering troops destroyed the tunnel shafts, which were found in the homes of Hamas terrorists who participated in October 7.

Operation Oz and Nir was launched a few days ago and was named after Kibbutz Nir Oz, which suffered so much at the hands of Hamas.

Commander of the Gaza Division, Brig.-Gen. Avi Rosenfeld, in a statement to soldiers, announced that "On October 7, terrorists came from Khuza’a who committed the most horrifying crimes imaginable. The attack by the Gaza terrorists from Khuza’a was aimed at Kibbutz Nir Oz, a community of people of work and peace."

IDF troops continue operations in southern Gaza

IDF troops continue to operate in Khan Yunis, one of the last strongholds of Hamas. On Thursday, Israeli paratroopers identified a terrorist pulling an RPG out of a stash and threw several grenades toward him.

Additionally, soldiers located several terrorists hiding inside a building and eliminated them using tank fire. 

In another incident, the combat team located a terrorist cell barricaded in a structure, and an Israeli Air Force jet targeted the building, killing the terrorists.

The bodies that the IDF returned to Gaza on Wednesday were missing vital organs, according to foreign media outlets citing the Hamas-run Gaza Government Media Office. 

The Palestinian Health Ministry on Wednesday confirmed the receipt of 80 bodies of Palestinians killed in Gaza and taken to Israel.

Gaza's GMO said the bodies were "mutilated" and that Israel had removed "vital organs from them," according to Al Jazeera.

The IDF has yet to respond to these reports, but no Israeli official source has confirmed such an accusation. These sorts of remarks have been immediately refuted and shot down in the past, but that has not stopped them from arising time and time again.

Who is making the claims?

Turkish media outlets Politicstoday.org and Anadolu further claimed the GPO criticized "the silent position of the international organizations operating in Gaza, including the International Committee of the Red Cross, towards such an awful crime by the [Israeli] occupation." This quote was also included in The Palestine Chronicle's account of the GPO report. 

Several Middle Eastern media outlets, including the Chronicle, Al-Mayadeen and Al-Jazeera, claimed that Israel was illegally harvesting organs from the bodies and that this was only one in a series of Israeli organ-harvesting incidents.  

Bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes are seen at Abu Yossef Al-Najar hospital, in Rafah (credit: REUTERS)

NGOs Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor and the Qatari-run Middle East Monitor claimed that this is not the first time Israel has wrongfully taken parts from Palestinian bodies in Israeli custody.

Euro-Med further stated that, in recent years, Israel has exhumed bodies from cemeteries designated for "enemy casualties" (this often refers to terrorists shot and killed during terror attacks) for the purpose of organ theft. 

"Israel," according to the human rights advocate, "is thought to be the biggest hub for the illegal global trade in human organs." This assertion was made citing a 2008 CNN investigation seemingly based on the case of Dr. Yehuda Hiss, who was accused in the late 1990s of stealing and illegally selling organs to universities and medical schools. 

Euro-Med also cited anthropologist Dr. Meira Weiss's book The Chosen Body: The Politics of the Body in Israeli Society to make the point that the Israeli military and government have misused corpses for nefarious purposes in the past. 

The Al-Jazeera report on the recent return of bodies made significant use of Euro-Med's information and also maintained that Israel was one of the largest centers for the "illicit trade of human organs" in the world. 

This isn't new

False allegations that Israel illegally harvests organs are not new. This past August, it was revealed that Jsbir Puar, a teacher at Princeton University, included in one of the course syllabuses a book that claims that IDF had been harvesting Palestinian organs.

The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS) has regularly falsely claimed that Israel harvests organs of Palestinians killed by the IDF. In 2019, they claimed that organs were harvested from Palestinian children.

Prior to that, in 2018, a senior executive of one of Belgium’s main trade unions, Robrecht Vanderbeeken, wrote a column for the news website De Wereld Morgen claiming that Israel poisons Palestinians and kills their children for their organs.

These types of claims resurface regularly in the anti-Israel camp. The UN Human Rights Council, in 2010, shared a statement by an NGO on their official website which claims that Israel harvests organs.

The International Organization for the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination [EAFORD] accused Israel at the time of “ethnic cleansing and massacres” before it moved on to the issue of what it called “dead, kidnapped and killed Palestinians.”

“Their [Palestinian] human organs, as reported in the press, can be a source of immense wealth through illegal trafficking in the world market,” wrote EAFORD.

“Israeli physicians, Medical Centres, rabbis and the Israeli army may be involved,” it stated.

These false allegations do not claim that Israel targets Palestinians alone; that same year, 2010, in the UK, Baroness Jenny Tonge was removed from her position as health spokeswoman after calling for the IDF to investigate allegations of organ "harvesting" by medical teams giving humanitarian assistance to victims of an earthquake in Haiti.

Israel's statement regarding the 80 corpses 

Israel said it was returning the bodies after confirming that they were not Israeli hostages taken by Hamas during the October 7 massacre in which at least 1,200 people were murdered and 240 taken hostage.

An Israeli military spokesperson said that during the war, bodies have been transported to Israel "for an identification procedure as part of our effort to locate the hostages and the missing persons."

"The difficulties in identifying those murdered make it necessary to transfer those bodies to Israel for forensic identification," the spokesperson said, adding that it was in line with "routine analysis that complies with internationally accepted forensic standards" in order to rule out their identification as Israeli hostages.

Gigi Hadid and out-of-context information 

Supermodel Gigi Hadid came under fire in November for claiming that "Israel has been harvesting organs from dead Palestinians for years without their consent."

She referenced a decade-old news investigation that aired on Israeli television in the early 2000s. A particular clip includes the investigators interviewing Weiss and discussing the practices of Israel's Forensic Medicine Institute. 

The author did claim that Israel was illegally harvesting the organs of Palestinians, but the video Hadid shared claimed that she was a health official rather than an independent researcher. 

Hadid later apologized for her post, which also claimed that Israel had abducted, raped, and tortured Palestinians for years "before October 7."

“I shared something that I did not fact-check or deeply think about prior to reposting,” Hadid wrote. “I was trying to highlight how Palestinian children who are arrested by the IDF are often not given the same rights as an Israeli child accused of the same crime would. Unfortunately, I used the wrong example to make that point, and I regret that.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

The IDF named Capt. (res.) Harel Sharvit as fallen in battle in Gaza on Friday morning.

Sharvit, 33, was from Kochav Ya'acov and served as a combat officer in the 551st Brigade's 7008th Battalion.

His funeral will be held on Friday morning at 11:30 at Mt. Herzl military cemetery. 

The number of IDF casualties on the ground since the invasion of Gaza began in October now stands at 168.