TEL AVIV — A plan mediated by Qatar and France to deliver lifesaving medication to Israeli hostages, as well as critical aid to civilians in Gaza, went into motion Wednesday in a rare diplomatic breakthrough.
Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman Majed al-Ansari said Tuesday the supplies would leave Doha, the Qatari capital, on two air force planes bound for the Egyptian city of Arish. At least one of the planes carrying the medicines landed in Egypt on Wednesday morning, and the deal to transfer the supplies was underway, according to an Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive event.
The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday night that the agreement was reached with the participation of Mossad head David Barnea, who has been in Qatar to discuss “the issue of supplying medicines to the Israeli hostages.” It said that the medicines were purchased in France, according to a list prepared by Israel, and that Qatari representatives will be responsible for the delivery to their “final destination.”
“Israel insists that all the medicines reach their destination,” the statement said, without further explanation.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) welcomed the deal, calling it “a much-needed moment of relief for the families of the hostages and the health facilities in Gaza,” said ICRC spokesman Jason Straziuso. The organization, which is supposed to help transfer the aid inside Gaza, added that it has “has been urging the parties and those who have influence to ensure that medicines get into the hands of all those who need them.”
The precise mechanism for getting the aid to the hostages was not immediately clear. Senior Hamas official Mousa Abu Marzouk said on X, formerly Twitter, that the delivery includes 140 types of medicine that would be taken by the Red Cross to four hospitals in the Gaza Strip and then distributed onward, including to hostages.
Among the conditions set forth, he said, is a ban on Israeli inspection of the packages before entering Gaza and a requirement that “for every box of medicine” for hostages, the shipments would include “another thousand for our people.”
He said that France had asked to carry out the delivery but that Hamas refused “due to our lack of confidence in the French government, its position in support of the Israeli occupation, and its hindering of our people’s aspirations for freedom and return.”
Philippe Lalliot, director of the French Foreign Ministry Crisis and Support Center, said in a radio interview Tuesday that France transferred the medicines to Qatar on Saturday in diplomatic suitcases. He said that they would be brought to 45 hostages, none of whom are French nationals.
He added that French authorities were initially approached by families of the hostages months ago and were given a list of 85 hostages in need of medication. The list included a number of hostages who were later released during a temporary cease-fire in late November, or who have since died in captivity.
Lalliot said the mission, under the direction of President Emmanuel Macron, did not involve direct contact between French officials and Hamas.
French media, citing the president’s office, said the medicines would be delivered to Rafah and picked up by the Red Cross and delivered to the hostages — there was no mention of it going to hospitals first. The packages contain enough medicine for three months of treatment, and French authorities hope to facilitate future deliveries, according to the reports.
Israel has for months demanded that medications be delivered to the more than 100 hostages still in Hamas captivity. The hostages include many who were injured in the Oct. 7 assault and others with severe medical conditions. Israel has not definitively confirmed if Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage whose one year old birthday is on Thursday, is alive. Hamas has claimed he was killed by an Israeli airstrike.
Among the Israeli hostages inside Gaza is Omer Wenkert, a 22-year old Israeli-Romanian national who suffers from ulcerative colitis, a chronic inflammatory condition of the bowel. Wenkert is supposed to take a daily dose of the medicine Rafassal, his uncle Ricardo Grichener told The Post.
Stress and a poor diet can cause painful flare-ups and without access to his medication, Wenkert’s family is “really worried” that his condition has worsened in captivity, Grichener said. They hope, but are not certain, that Wenkert is on the list.
Grichener says he is “optimistic” that if the agreement succeeds, it means a deal to secure the release of hostages could happen in the future.
“I don’t know the conditions and I really don’t care,” his uncle said. “But a deal should be done.”
Hamas released more than 100 hostages in late November, though the way that the militant group carried out the transfer has been sharply criticized by many Israelis after footage and testimonies indicated they were subjected to physical and verbal harassment by locals as the exchange took place.
Families of the hostages have been meeting with Israeli, Qatari and international officials and diplomats with pleas that all measures be taken to secure their relatives’ release, amid a sense of urgency over their fate during the ongoing conflict.
On Tuesday, Itay Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi, who were abducted on Oct. 7 from Beeri kibbutz, were declared dead by their kibbutz.
The news came a day after Hamas released a video purportedly showing the bodies of the two men, saying they were killed when Israeli airstrikes hit the buildings where they were being held. Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari rejected the claim as a “Hamas lie,” adding that the building in which the two men were kept was not considered a target and was not hit by the Israel Defense Forces.
The aid deal will also include the transfer of medicines to the most vulnerable areas for civilians in Gaza, where 15 hospitals are partially functioning and the health system is quickly collapsing as the fighting continues to rage.
Brett McGurk, President Biden’s coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, was in Doha to discuss a possible deal for the release of captives, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. Six Americans are believed to be among the hostages.
But it was France and Qatar, the tiny Gulf country that has functioned as an intermediary between the world and Hamas, that came out publicly with the agreement.
Qatar brokered the release of two American hostages in October and oversaw a pause in fighting between Israel and Hamas in November that led to the release of more than 100 hostages from Gaza in exchange for more than 200 Palestinians serving sentences in Israeli prisons.
The latest deal, if successfully implemented, could provide lifesaving treatment to hostages who have now been held in Gaza for more than 100 days. “At least one third of these hostages have chronic illnesses and need constant medication,” including for cancer and asthma, while others are “suffering from harsh captivity conditions,” said a medical report last week by the Hostage Families Forum, an umbrella organization for hostages and their relatives.
Hagai Levin, a doctor who heads the medical team of the forum, said that physicians have been requesting the transfer of medical supplies to hostages in the days after Oct. 7, when Hamas-led forces killed 1,200 and took more than 240 hostage.
He described the Wednesday shipment as a “light in hell,” but added that the list of medicines was incomplete, and, even if successful, would still leave many hostages vulnerable.
It is not clear how much aid was intended for civilians in Gaza, where doctors are scrambling to tend to an ongoing stream of severe cases and international health officials have said that parts of the population are already nearing a state of famine.
“Some people have not eaten in days,” Olga Cherevko of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said in a video from southern Gaza on Tuesday. “The extent of needs is enormous.”
In a statement Tuesday, independent rights experts advising the United Nations said the crisis in Gaza is “unparalleled,” with a quarter of the population starving and famine “imminent.” Some 335,000 children under 5 are at risk of severe malnutrition, and “a whole generation is now in danger of suffering from stunting,” they said.
Michel-Olivier Lacharité, head of emergency operations for Doctors Without Borders (MSF, by its French abbreviation), told The Washington Post last week that as the ground operations and shelling moved south, “we are running out of hospitals.”
The organization, along with the International Rescue Committee and Medical Aid for Palestinians, pulled out of al-Aqsa Hospital — the only functioning hospital in central Gaza at the time — earlier this month, after the surrounding areas came under Israeli attack and received evacuation notices from the Israel Defense Forces.
“Technically it’s true that the hospitals per se are not targeted,” Lacharité said. “However, what we can see is that the opposite side of the street or the neighboring premises of these hospitals are targeted, leaflets are sent, this provokes some panic.”
On Wednesday, the Jordanian army reported that its field hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis was impacted by nearby fighting, wounding a staff member and a patient. “Despite significant material damage due to the ongoing Israeli bombardment in the vicinity, which started yesterday and continued into Wednesday morning, the hospital remains committed to fulfilling its medical and humanitarian duties,” the army said.
The statement added the Jordanian army holds the IDF accountable for safety of the hospital staff.
Masih reported from Seoul, Timsit from London. Karen DeYoung and Sammy Westfall in Washington contributed to this report.
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