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."

Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar secretly met on Wednesday in Cairo with the head of Egyptian intelligence Abbas Kamel; Walla reported Thursday evening.

As per the report, Kamel hosted Bar at the former's Iftar meal.

This is a developing story.

Israel allegedly carried out strikes near Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, Israeli media reported, citing the Iranian-affiliated Sabareen News site. 

The Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), citing Syrian military sources, reported that Israel targeted a residential building in the Damascus countryside, injuring two civilians in the process.

Material damage was also caused in the strike, as per SANA.

Local reporters claimed on X that the airstrikes targeted a farm in the town of Sayyidah Zaynab, south of Damascus, where Iranian-affiliated militias were reportedly located.

There were also unconfirmed reports of the killing of an Iranian member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard.

סוריה: דיווחים על תקיפה ישראלית בסיידא זינב אזור הכפרי של דמשק
אזור שהותקף מספר פעמים בחודשים האחרונים pic.twitter.com/QWiq7Jmi2C

— בז news (@1717Bazz) March 28, 2024

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to the families of soldiers held hostage by Hamas on Thursday. 

In his statements, he said, "I know that every day you go through hell. Your sons are heroes, Israel's heroes. As we have already returned 123 hostages, I am obliged to return them all, every single one. I will not leave anyone behind."

Netanyahu noted, "I deal with this every day and night on a personal level. Only with the continuation of our exerted military pressure will we be able to return the hostages. In addition, we have the strategic assets of Hamas, and this is another key to the liberation of our sons and daughters."

"We conquered the northern Gaza Strip and Khan Yunis; we have secured the Strip, and we are preparing to enter Rafah."

"To bring them all home, all these assets need to be used wisely in the negotiations that I myself conduct every day - to bring them all home, not just some of them," the prime minister said. 

Judges at the International Court of Justice on Thursday unanimously ordered Israel to take all the necessary and effective action to ensure basic food supplies without delay to the Palestinian population in Gaza, according to a Reuters report. 

The court said the Palestinians in Gaza face worsening conditions of life, and famine and starvation are spreading.

Soldiers from the IDF's air defense unit successfully intercepted a suspicious aerial target entering Israel from Lebanese territory using the "Yahalom" system, the IDF Spokesperson's Unit announced on Thursday.

One of the interceptors launched and exploded in the sky over Israeli territory. 

Throughout Thursday, a number of aerial launches were detected from Lebanon, with the IDF responding by attacking the sources of the launches.

This is a developing story.

The White House 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," White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said on Thursday. "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."

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 allow Hamas to be able to conduct another attack like they did on the seventh of October."

Reuters reported on Thursday that difficulties getting Israeli permission for foreign staff to work in Israel and the Palestinian territories are hampering efforts to get aid into war-shattered Gaza, where civilians are facing imminent famine, according to UN data and aid workers.

Six aid workers from the UN and other groups interviewed by Reuters cited delays to visas as an example of red tape they say is thwarting aid to Gaza, nearly six months into Israel's offensive against Hamas terrorists.

Israel's Foreign Affairs Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. An Israeli official who asked for anonymity as the official was not authorized to speak publicly cited high demand as a challenge and raised question marks about some groups' objectives, saying some aid workers "have designs that are not humanitarian."

UN data shared with Reuters showed that 45 visa requests are pending, more than half of which have been on hold for over two months, and several stalled since at least November.

A further 20 UN requests pending since late 2023 have been completely dropped due to the delays. The affected missions were either abandoned or postponed, said the UN source who shared the data and asked not to be identified, fearing repercussions.

"This is slowing down the Gaza response at a time when we need to scale up and have more manpower to handle operations," said the UN source.

Israel allegedly carried out strikes near Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, Israeli media reported, citing the Iranian-affiliated Sabareen News site. 

This is a developing story. 

The IDF on Thursday put out a video of a Unit 504 interrogation of an Islamic Jihad terrorist named Manar Mahmoud Muhammad Qasem in which he explicitly confesses to and describes his rape of an Israeli woman on October 7.

From the interrogation video, Qasem did not seem to know much about the invasion of Israel in advance, but he was told by one of his fellow Islamic Jihad counterparts that they were going to attack Israel when he arrived at their regular base.

Despite being trained for naval combat, he and his counterpart joined in the invasion on land. Qasem noted to the interrogator that his counterpart was wounded in the head after they crossed into Israel, but that he proceeded into a Kibbutz with a handgun and two grenades.

Next, he said, he entered a house alone; it initially appeared empty, but he then found a woman in one of the side rooms.