The Israeli government declared a formal state of war against Hamas, the militant Palestinian group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since 2007, while cutting electricity, water and food shipments to the tiny coastal strip in the wake of Saturday’s attack on adjacent Israeli communities that killed at least 700 Israelis with scores missing and believed held inside Gaza.
Israeli security forces continued to battle Hamas gunmen for the third day in rural Israeli towns and settlements surrounding Gaza in what most Israelis consider the biggest security and intelligence failure in the nation’s history.
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A third day of fighting after hundreds of fighters from Hamas and a slew of other militant factions broke out of the Gaza security cordon and began attacking settlements, towns and even a dance party has greatly slowed the effort to recover bodies and determine exactly how many prisoners and hostages have been taken.
“It could be as high as 120,” said an Israeli security official speaking from a kibbutz on the outskirts of Gaza. “But for a third day we have been slowed in determining the actual numbers of casualties and missing because of efforts to secure and search dozens of crime scenes often while fighting is ongoing.”
“We have to carefully go from house to house to count our dead,” they added. “Soon we will be going from house to house in Gaza looking for the terrorists and recovering our hostages.”
Earlier Monday, a spokesperson for the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) told reporters that dozens were missing and the effort to secure the scenes of the attacks, including a desert rave party where an estimated 260 bodies were found Monday, was taking longer than expected.
A representative of Osama Hamden, a top Hamas official based in Beirut, told VICE News on Sunday night the number of Israelis captured during the operation far exceeded expectations and that multiple other militant groups, as well as armed civilians, had also taken prisoners. The current conditions in Gaza make it difficult for the groups to communicate and coordinate, they said.
“The [fighters] can’t speak on the telephone, different groups are hiding all over Gaza and have prisoners, tunnels, basements… it will take some time to gather the correct information,” said the Hamas official. On Monday the group announced it would release specific numbers shortly. Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a close Hamas ally, said it was holding around 30 Israelis but that number had not been confirmed.
Days of airstrikes on Gaza since Saturday’s attack have targeted buildings and facilities managed by Hamas, which administers the coastal enclave of about 2 million people, and for operational security reasons, the groups are only communicating in person.
At least 500 Palestinians have died in the air strikes according to health officials in Gaza, and Hamas continued to fire periodic rocket barrages into Israel on Monday.
US officials also confirmed that at least nine Americans had died in the attack and suggested a number could be held inside Gaza by militants. The UK announced the death of at least 10 citizens and said an unknown number of hostages were believed to be British.
The Reuters news agency reported Monday that Qatari negotiators were brokering a deal between Israel and Hamas to release an unknown number of Israeli women and children captured on Saturday for 36 Palestinian women and children held in Israeli jails, but details could not be immediately confirmed.
“I can’t speak to it except to say it’s logical for both sides and maybe the only realistic negotiation I can imagine right now,” said a regional diplomat, who refused to be named. “Hamas knows they have far more Israelis than necessary to negotiate and reducing the burden of how many people they are holding makes sense. And Israel can release women and children in exchange fairly easily because none would have participated in the attack.”
Palestinian and Lebanese militants, most notably the close Hamas ally Hezbollah, have long conducted operations to capture or kill Israeli soldiers in the expectation of trading them for hundreds of their own prisoners.
In 2011, Sgt Gilad Shalit, who had been captured by Hamas along the border fence with Gaza and held for five years, was exchanged for nearly 1,000 Hamas and Islamic Jihad prisoners. Other operations and swaps have included a single kidnapped officer traded for hundreds of Hezbollah prisoners, as well as the 2006 Hezbollah operation that captured the bodies of two IDF soldiers. In 2008 the bodies were traded for multiple Hezbollah prisoners and Samir Kuntar, a Palestinian militant jailed for decades for murdering two Israeli children.
“Releasing the women and children will do nothing to hurt [Hamas’] leverage in negotiations,” said the regional diplomat. “The bigger question is what dozens or more hostages means for the IDF plan to hunt down Hamas inside Gaza. It’s almost too incredible to comprehend.”
