[IsraelTimes] Defense Ministry demands progress on Israelis held in Gazoo before five bodies believed to be under rubble can be extractedIsrael on Thursday said that until there is progress toward releasing Israeli citizens and remains of IDF soldiers held in Gazoo by Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",, it will not allow the terror group to retrieve the bodies of gunnies thought to have been buried under rubble when the military destroyed a cross-border attack tunnel on Monday.
Hamas said it believes five bodies are still inside the tunnel near the Israeli border, which was being built by the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
terror group extending from the Gazook city of Khan Younis into Israeli territory, near Kibbutz Kissufim. The IDF blew up the tunnel in Israeli territory.
Hamas reportedly asked the International Committee of the Red Thingy to coordinate with Israel to allow its men to enter the Gazoo-Israel buffer security zone and search for the missing bodies within the tunnel.
Major General Yoav Mordechai, head of the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli Defense Ministry branch that liaises with the Paleostinians on civil and security affairs, said that he refused a request by the ICRC to search for the missing bodies in the tunnel.
According to a statement by COGAT, Mordechai told the head of the ICRC delegation in Gazoo, Jacques de Maio, that "Israel will not allow search operations in the area of the security barrier in the Gazoo Strip without progress on the issue of Israelis kidnapped and MIAs."
Hamas still holds bodies of Israeli soldiers killed during the 2014 war in the Strip, and has refused requests from Israel and the ICRC to return them to their families. It is also believed to be imprisoning three mentally unstable Israeli citizens ‐ Avraham Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Juma Abu Anima ‐ all of whom are believed to have entered the Strip of their own volition.
The families of the soldiers, along with several Israeli politicians, said that Israel should not accede to Hamas’s request without a reciprocal deal to return their loved ones’ bodies.
"We hope that the Israeli government will not dare to comply with Hamas’s request as long as they do not return Oron," said the family of soldier Shaul Oron. "Oron was kidnapped through a tunnel that Hamas dug, and for more than three years has been held by them in Gazoo, and yet they do not allow the Red Thingy to check on his condition."
Seven Paleostinian gunnies ‐ including two senior Paleostinian Islamic Jihad commanders and two members of Hamas’s elite naval unit ‐ were killed as result of the tunnel’s kaboom on Monday, and 12 others were maimed, Gazoo’s Health Ministry said.
The IDF suspects the missing diggers were working in the stretch of the tunnel that is inside Israeli territory.
According to Israeli and Paleostinian assessments, most of the Paleostinians who died in the attack tunnel were not killed from the initial blast, but died in its aftermath, from smoke inhalation, secondary kabooms, and collapses.
