The Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) has released the video of two Israeli hostages - a 70-year-old woman and a 13-year-old boy - abducted during the October 7 attacks, which shows them accusing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of causing the ongoing situation.
The videos come as Mossad chief David Barnea and CIA director William Burns meet Qatar Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani to discuss the hostage crisis. Though Hamas has earlier released videos of hostages, it is the first time that Islamic Jihad is posting footage of hostages it is holding.
While one clip shows an elderly woman, identified as Hannah Katzir, in a wheelchair, the next shows 13-year-old Yagil Yaakov. Both, kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, speak in Hebrew in the 3-minute-long clip.
The Islamic Jihad said it was prepared to release them for humanitarian and medical reasons, but only if "appropriate measures" were met.
Israel described the videos as an important sign of life but declined to say whether they would be released. That would play into the captors' "psychological terror", it said.
IDF spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the military "was not passing up any opportunity and we will not pass up any opportunity to bring the hostages home." He also urged the families of the captives and the public not to listen to media reports and rumours about hostage releases or rescues and said the IDF would update the families with any real news.
Meanwhile, Mossad chief David Barnea and CIA director William Burns met with Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed Bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on Thursday. Their meeting happened after the Qatari mediators met with Hamas officials on Wednesday night and discussed potential parameters of a deal, reported Reuters.
The advantage of the meeting was to bring all three parties together at one table in real-time to speed up the process, Reuters quoted a source. Besides, the spy chiefs also discussed allowing humanitarian imports of fuel into Gaza. The talks also touched on a release of 10-15 hostages in exchange for a one- to two-day humanitarian pause in the war that is devastating Gaza, the report added.
Burns was in Israel earlier this week for the first time since the outbreak of war,. The CIA director also visited UAE and Egypt during his regional tour.
Meanwhile, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said there was "no real proposal that is viable from Hamas’s side" on the table for the release of hostages. "Whilst there are many, many people who are third parties who are sending optimistic messages to the newsreels, I’m saying outright: According to my knowledge, up to now, there is no real substantial information that is showing any real offer of any process on the table," he told NBC News in an interview.