Hamas, PIJ name three captives to be freed in Gaza

Here is what you need to know about the three captives planned to be released by the Palestinians groups in Gaza on Saturday:

• Yair Horn, 46, was taken by fighters from his home in the Nir Oz settlement on October 7, 2023. His family emigrated from Argentina to Israel many years ago, according to Israeli media, which added that he worked in construction, and was heavily involved in the community of Nir Oz, organising parties and activities.
• Israeli-Russian captive Alexander Trufanov, 29, was abducted with his girlfriend, Sapir Cohen, from their home in Nir Oz. The Israeli media said that his father was killed in the October 7, 2023 attack, and his captive mother and grandmother were freed as part of the November 2023 deal. The family emigrated from Russia in the late 1990s, reports added.
• Sagui Dekel-Chen, who was also taken from Nir Oz, is an American and Israeli citizen. The 36-year-old is a father of three, including one who was born during his captivity, and is not aware that his wife and children survived the October 2023 attack, media reports say, adding that he refurbished old buses into mobile classrooms for underserved children.
  

  Israel expected to name Palestinian prisoners to be released tomorrow

• There is very little information in terms of how the release of captives is going to proceed.

  The expectation is that three Israeli captives will be released on Saturday, and that came after the breakthrough in the ceasefire talks and the implementation of the humanitarian protocol, as Hamas refers to it, were realised, given the efforts of the mediators.

  In the past few days, there was a lot of concern that the ceasefire was not going to hold because Israel was not allowing enough humanitarian assistance, fuel, mobile homes or tents into the Strip.

  Israel is now expected to disclose the list of Palestinian detainees, prisoners, and disappeared people who will be released.

  What they lost: Families in terror as Israel raids West Bank camps

  The rain on Friday did not stop.

  Nor did the pounding of Israeli soldiers on the doors of homes across Far’a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

  Strong winds rushed into houses as doors were knocked down, and the cold bit into the bodies of panicked, unarmed civilians forced into the streets.

  In the early hours of the morning, amid an eight-day siege that had cut the camp off from the outside world, dozens of military vehicles and bulldozers rolled up to the camp’s entrance.

  Hundreds of Israeli soldiers poured out, swarming through the narrow alleyways. Orders shouted in Hebrew blared from speakers, overlapping with the soldiers’ commands as they banged on doors with the butts of their rifles.

  “Open the door! Get out now!” they yelled.

  Hamas names three captives to be released in Gaza tomorrow

  The armed wing of Hamas, Qassam Brigades, has revealed the names of the captives in a statement on Telegram.

  The statement said Alexander “Sasha” Trufanov, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Yair Horn will be released on Saturday.

  Amnesty chief calls on world to stand up to ‘Donald Trump effect’ in Gaza

  Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard has spoken to Al Jazeera at the Munich Security Conference about what she said was the “Donald Trump effect” on human rights around the world.

  “In the case of Gaza, what we are witnessing is not even disruption … It is cruel destruction of a peace process that took months to be negotiated, that has reached a very fragile state,” she said.

  “What Donald Trump has done is really fragilise it further and make phase two of that peace process extraordinarily difficult,” she noted.

  “It is a war crime to forcibly push people out of their places, and it could be a crime against humanity if it is well organised; in a nutshell, it amounts to ethnic cleansing if was to be carried out,” she stated.

  “This is where we need the rest of the world, the international community, the countries such as Jordan and Lebanon and others to stand up and say … absolutely no, and to say it in the most resolute and firm fashion,” she said.

  Three Palestinians arrested in occupied West Bank’s Taybeh: Israeli police

  The Israeli police have claimed that they seized five pistols and an M16 gun, as it detained residents in the village of Taybeh in the occupied West Bank’s Ramallah and el-Bireh governorate.

  The Palestinians are suspected of involvement in an assault on police officers during a wedding, a statement on X said.

  “During the campaign, approximately 100 bullets and substances suspected to be narcotics were seized,” it added.

  The Palestinian Prisoner’s Society said in a statement yesterday that Israel has intensified its arrests in the occupied West Bank since the eruption of the Gaza war in 2023, targeting “all segments of Palestinian society, including children, women, young people, the wounded, and the elderly”.

  “These mass arrest campaigns are an extension of the occupation’s decades-long systematic policies of persecuting the Palestinian population. Such policies have escalated in an unprecedented manner following the genocide and the rise of atrocities committed against Palestinian detainees,” it said on Telegram.