Israel-Hamas War day 291: What is happening in Israel and Gaza?

Aviva Siegel, freed from Hamas captivity, urged Congress to secure a deal for remaining hostages while sharing harrowing experiences and pleading for immediate action.

IDF’s reinvasion of Khan Yunis has killed dozens of Hamas terrorists. Air strikes and ground operations target terror infrastructure and Hamas’s reorganization efforts.

Relatives of hostages in Hamas captivity with American citizenship have begun a meeting with the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday.

Released hostage, Aviva Siegel is also in attendance.

Multiple Hezbollah drones were intercepted by the IDF in the North. However, additional drones crashed onto Mount Meron, the IDF announced on Tuesday. 

Similarly, several projectiles were detected crossing from Lebanon into Israeli territory. Most were intercepted, but hits occurred in Margaliot, Misgav Am, and Kiryat Shmona, with no reported injuries.

The IDF also announced that earlier today, an IAF aircraft targeted a vehicle in the Shaqra area of southern Lebanon, which was being used by Hezbollah terrorists.

Hostile aircraft intrusion sirens sounded in northern Israel on Tuesday afternoon.

A vehicle was attacked in southern Lebanon, Israeli media reported Tuesday. 

Following the IDF confirmation on Monday that hostage Yagev Buchshtab was killed in Gaza, his mother, Esther Buchshtab, spoke of the initial optimism regarding the hostage deal in an interview with KAN on Tuesday. 

Buchshtab told KAN that the news of her son's death was received with sadness, saying, "We hoped so much that, despite the difficulty and horror, the story would end differently."

Yagev Buchshtab's wife, Rimon, was released in the first hostage release deal of November. 

Buchshtab's mother shared with KAN that optimism began to fade, saying, "We understood that it was very difficult and bad there [in Hamas captivity], and their optimism gave us hope, but the more the state forgot and abandoned them, the more we feared."

With nine and a half months of fighting in the Gaza Strip, the IDF is refining its instructions and objectives coming from the office of Major General Yaron Finkelman, commander of the Southern Command.

According to findings from Division 162 along the Philadelphi Corridor, specifically in identifying and destroying tunnels underneath the route, the IDF is dismantling Hamas's smuggling arm. It has come to light that Hamas is attempting to smuggle money into Gaza to fund governance activities and pay salaries to its operatives.

The Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry stated on Tuesday that the death toll in Gaza has reached 39,090 since the war started on October 7 of last year.

A further 90,147 have thus far been wounded in the conflict, the Gazan ministry added.

The number has not been independently verified, and the ministry does not differentiate between civilians and combatants in its toll.

The Hamas-run ministry has also been repeatedly criticized for distorting casualty figures.

In May, departing from Hamas’s reported figures, the UN halved the number of women and children it had previously reported had been killed thus far in the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told families of hostages held in Gaza that a deal that would secure their loved ones' release could be nearing, his office said on Tuesday.

"The conditions are undoubtedly ripening. This is a good sign," Netanyahu told the families on Monday in Washington, where he was expected to meet US President Joe Biden later this week after making an address to Congress.

Efforts to reach a Gaza ceasefire deal, outlined by Biden in May and mediated by Egypt and Qatar, have gained momentum over the past month. On Friday, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said negotiators were "driving toward the goal line."