Israel-Hamas War: What happened on day 173?

One of the Gaza hostages, Luis Har, who was rescued by the IDF in mid-February, spoke to the Daily Mail in a report they released on Wednesday regarding his detainment by the Hamas terrorist organization in Gaza.

The rescue occurred at 2 a.m. where the Mail report described it as a "huge explosion which threw the 71-year-old accountant from his mattress and ripped off the door from his tiny cell-like room."

Alleged Israeli airstrikes targeted sites in the Aleppo area in northern Syria early Friday morning, according to Syrian reports.

Just a few hours before those strikes, a site used by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Sayyida Zeinab near Damascus was targeted in an alleged Israeli airstrike on Thursday afternoon, according to Syrian reports.

Negotiations to release the Israeli hostages held by Hamas are set to resume in Cairo next week after talks in Qatar fell apart earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday night.

No official announcement had been made as of Thursday night concerning such talks.

Officials at the Pentagon are in early talks to fund a peacekeeping mission to Gaza with the aim of stabilizing the Strip post-war, according to a report by POLITICO on Thursday.

All options currently being considered would not include US troops on the ground, but it would most likely be a multinational or Palestinian majority force, according to the officials who spoke to POLITICO.

The US Department of Defence would provide the majority of the funds that would support the arrival of troops from other countries.

The families of the soldiers held hostage by Hamas criticized Netanyahu's strategy for ensuring their loved one's release, a spokesperson from the Hostage and Missing Families forum announced Thursday evening. 

Their statements come following a meeting between families of the soldiers held hostage by Hamas and Prime Minister Netanyahu on Thursday. The families, who have not seen or heard from their children in 174 days, have repeatedly called on Netanyahu to do more to ensure the release of their loved ones. 

After they met with Netanyahu, the families made statements to the media outside the IDF recruitment base. 

Ruby Chen, the father of the late Itay Chen, whose body is held by Hamas, told reporters, "The meeting was with our new family. Within this family, we may look different: Jews, Bedouins, haredim, rabbis, secular, religious. On the one hand, we are very different. Still, on the other, we have something strong that unites us and makes us very similar: we are Zionist citizens, Israelis, who have raised our children to contribute to a meaningful service."

"Unfortunately, we heard things from the prime minister that were not new. The prime minister has a policy he believes in, and even after 174 days, he continues to follow this. We tried to talk to the prime minister about a new concept: civil security is no less important than military security for the citizens of the State of Israel. Citizens must receive civil security," Chen said.

Rabbi Doron Perez, the father of the late Daniel Perez, whose body is also being held by Hamas, made remarks alongside Chen. 

"We do not support a war in Lebanon,"  White House National Security spokesman John Kiby said on Thursday, addressing rising tensions in Israel's north. "We don't want to see that happen. We've been crystal clear about that since the very beginning of this."

"Restoring calm along that border remains a top priority for President Biden and from the administration, and it has to be of the utmost importance, we believe as well, for both Lebanon and Israel," he added.

The White House also said it is still working to reschedule its meeting with the Israeli delegation who Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pulled from meeting with the US following its abstention in the United Nations Security Council ceasefire resolution vote.

"The tone throughout here has been businesslike and it's been professional and we expect that it's going to stay that way. We're hoping that this meeting can be scheduled in person here in Washington as was the original plan," said Kirby. "That's the plan that we're still working on now. But again, no final date. And when we get that we'll let you know," he added.

The White House is still positing that a major ground of Rafah would be a mistake as it's a "tight piece of geography," as Kirby said.

"We haven't, and we're probably not going to agree with the Israelis on every single thing when it comes to their military operations," Kirby said, "but we both agree on the main important thing, and that is that we can't allow Hamas to be able to conduct another attack like they did on the seventh of October."

The United States' top general said on Thursday that Israel had not received every weapon that it had asked for, in part because US President Joe Biden's administration was not willing to provide at least some of them.

Washington gives $3.8 billion in annual military assistance to Israel, its longtime ally. The United States has been rushing air defenses and munitions to Israel, but some Democrats and Arab American groups have criticized the Biden administration's steadfast support of Israel, which they say provides it with a sense of impunity.

"Although we've been supporting them with capability, they've not received everything they've asked for," said General Charles Q. Brown, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Israel asked for stuff 'we are not willing to provide'

"Some of that is because they've asked for stuff that we either don't have the capacity to provide or are not willing to provide, not right now," Brown added while speaking at an event hosted by the Defense Writers Group.

The Israeli offensive prompted opposition from within Biden's Democratic Party, leading thousands to vote "uncommitted" for him in recent party presidential primaries.

US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin met with Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in Washington earlier this week, and the Pentagon said that security assistance for Israel had been discussed.

Gabriela Leimberg had been released from Hamas captivity after nearly 80 days when she received a phone call from the IDF officer handling her case at 3:20 am The officer quickly reassured her that it was good news, knowing that for Gabriela, whose family members Louis and Fernando were still in captivity, a middle-of-the-night phone call from the military was stressful, to say the least.

"We have them, they will be at Tel Hashomer in 30 minutes," the officer told her. Louis and Fernando had been rescued in a daring IDF operation in Gaza, freeing them from the Hamas apartment-turned-cell they had previously shared with Leimberg, her daughter Mia, sister Clara, and tiny dog Bella.

Leimberg was shocked, and it took her a while to understand what she was being told. "Are they ok?" she asked the officer. "Who else is coming back?" she added.

"It really is something we didn't imagine, certainly when we were in [captivity in Gaza]," she explained to The Jerusalem Post, saying that they thought that a rescue mission was impossible and would have led to the death of the hostages.

Leimberg and her family members had been taken from her sister's bomb shelter on the southern kibbutz of Nir Yitzchak on October 7. Leimberg and her daughter had been visiting her sister and planned to leave the kibbutz on Saturday morning. The rocket alerts that started sounding early kept them from leaving. The alarms weren't new to Leimberg, who regularly visited her sister. Still, this incident felt different because of the number of alarms and the messages from the kibbutz telling them to close themselves in their homes and stay in their shelters.

They learned about the infiltration of Hamas terrorists from Gaza on the news, where Leimberg says they started seeing what was happening in Sderot and kibbutz Be'eri. "The moment we realized it had reached us was when my sister got a message from her neighbor over WhatsApp that terrorists were inside her house," she said.

Realizing that terrorists might also try to come into their shelter, Leimberg and her family tried to block the door with a stick and a chair, but to no avail. Terrorists opened the door and shot into the room before taking them to a white pickup truck that drove them to Gaza.

The IDF confirmed on Thursday evening the assassination of Hamas official Ra'ad Taabat at Gaza's Shifa Hospital, R.-Amd. Daniel Hagari said.

Taabat was the head of Hamas's supply unit. His death was confirmed by Shin Bet intelligence, the IDF said.

Taabat's assassination comes amid the IDF's intensifying operations in Shifa Hospital, the site of many Hamas terrorists and infrastructure. 

Over the course of March, the IDF has conducted numerous raids, which include combing buildings in the sprawling hospital complex, clashing with terrorists, and uncovering weapons caches. 

These operations have seen hundreds of terrorists killed or apprehended, with the IDF reporting that 800 suspects were found, with at least 500 confirmed to be Hamas or Palestinian Islamic Jihad members. 

The IDF confirmed on Thursday evening the assassination of Hamas official Ra'ad Tabath at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital, R.-Amd. Daniel Hagari said.

Tabath was the head of Hamas's supply unit. His death was confirmed by Shin Bet intelligence, the IDF said.