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Israeli official says Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar can leave Gaza with family and end the war if hostages freed
Tel Aviv — Gal Hirsch, Israel’s coordinator for hostages and the missing, has broadened a cease-fire offer from the Israeli government to Hamas leader Yahyah Sinwar.
“I think we will be able to provide safe passage to him, his family, whoever he wants to take with him. If [he wants] to take ten, take ten. Thousands! I don’t care,” Hirsch told CBS News.
In return, he said Hamas would have to relinquish control of the Gaza Strip and allow the return of the remaining 101 hostages.
“It would be the end of the war, as [the hostages] will be recovered,” Hirsch said.
Of the remaining 101 hostages currently held by Hamas, Israeli intelligence believes 64 are still alive. Israel insists both the living and the dead must be returned.
Sinwar has not replied to Hirsch’s proposal since the Israeli negotiator first floated a more limited version of it last week.
Majdi Fathi/NurPhoto/Getty
The Hamas leader has been in hiding, presumed to be somewhere in the labyrinth of tunnels under Gaza, since the group launched its Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people, taking about 250 others hostage, and sparking the ongoing war in Gaza.
According to Israeli officials, Sinwar was last sighted in a video they say came from a Hamas security camera, recorded just days after the Oct. 7 massacre. The grainy black and white pictures only show him from behind, following his wife and children into a tunnel.
Sinwar was named the overall head of Hamas on Aug. 6, about a week after Israel assassinated the group’s long-time political leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran’s capital, Tehran.
Sinwar did issue a public message this week, thanking his Houthi allies in Yemen after one of their missiles reached Israel on Sunday. There was no suggestion in his message that he was open to accepting an Israeli offer of safe passage out of Gaza. On the contrary, he signalled that with the help of the Houthis and Hamas’ powerful Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, his group was ready to hold out for eventual victory over Israel.
“We have prepared ourselves for a prolonged war of attrition that will break the enemy’s political will,” he said.
Hirsch also signalled in his interview with CBS News that there could be some wiggle room in one of Israel’s key conditions for a cease-fire agreement with Hamas.
Two weeks ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was accused by Hamas of suddenly introducing a new term in the negotiations. He was said to have moved a goal post in the drawn-out dialogue, insisting that after the war, Israeli troops would have to remain in the Philadelphi Corridor, the area along Gaza’s southern border with Egypt, to make sure Hamas could not smuggle weapons into the Palestinian Territory that way.
For Hamas, any enduring Israeli military presence in Gaza has always been a non-starter in the negotiations.
Hirsch has now hinted that there could be room for a compromise.
“I’m dealing with the hostages and the missing,” he said. “The Philadelphi road is a very important asset for negotiations.”
Various senior Israeli military figures believe surveillance of the alleged smuggling route could be carried out electronically, with help from international partners, but without Israeli boots on the ground.
Asked whether Israel could rely on underground sensors instead of troops to detect smuggling, Hirsch said the details of the IDF deployment – which troops are stationed where – “is part of the negotiation.”
“The Philadelphi road, the prisoners in Israeli prisons, humanitarian support – these are all assets we can negotiate with to bring our hostages back home,” he said.
TRENTON, N.J. — Democratic Newark City Council President LaMonica McIver has defeated Republican small businessman Carmen Bucco in a contest in New Jersey’s 10th Congressional District that opened up because of the death of Rep. Donald Payne Jr. in April.
McIver will serve out the remainder of Payne’s term, which ends in January. She and Bucco will face a rematch on the November ballot for the full term.
McIver said in a statement Wednesday that she stands on the “shoulders of giants,” naming Payne as chief among them.
She cast ahead to the November election, saying the right to make reproductive health choices was on the ballot as well as whether the economy should benefit the wealthy or “hard working Americans.”
“I will fight because the purpose of politics and the purpose of our vote is to give the people of our communities and our nation a bold voice,” she said.
Bucco congratulated McIver on the victory in a statement but said he’s looking forward to the rematch in November.
“I am not going anywhere,” he said in an email. “We still have a second chance to make district 10 great again!”
Who are LaMonica McIver and Carmen Bucco?
McIver emerged as the Democratic candidate in a crowded field in the July special election. A member of the city council of New Jersey’s biggest city since 2018, she also worked for Montclair Public Schools as a personnel director and plans to focus on affordability, infrastructure, abortion rights and “protecting our democracy,” she told The Associated Press earlier this summer.
Bucco describes himself on his campaign website as a small-business owner influenced by his upbringing in the foster system. He lists support for law enforcement and ending corruption as top issues.
The 10th District lies in a heavily Democratic and majority-Black region of northern New Jersey. Republicans are outnumbered by more than 6 to 1.
It’s been a volatile year for Democrats in New Jersey, where the party dominates state government and the congressional delegation.
Among the developments were the conviction on federal bribery charges of U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, who has denied the charges, and the demise of the so-called county party line — a system in which local political leaders give their preferred candidates favorable position on the primary ballot.
Democratic Rep. Andy Kim, who’s running for Menendez’s seat, and other Democrats brought a federal lawsuit challenging the practice as part of his campaign to oust Menendez, who has resigned since his conviction.
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Sean “Diddy” Combs at same Brooklyn detention center that held R. Kelly, Sam Bankman-Fried, other high-profile inmates
A second judge refused to grant bail to Sean “Diddy” Combs on Wednesday and he could remain in federal custody at a Brooklyn detention center until his trial for sex trafficking charges. Combs joins other high-profile inmates, such as singer R. Kelly, fallen cryptocurrency mogul Sam Bankman-Fried, rapper Ja Rule —even Al Sharpton served a brief stint— who were held at the same federal detention center.
Notorious for its horrible conditions —inmates won a $10 million class action settlement after enduring frigid conditions during an 8-day blackout in 2019— the waterfront industrial complex, MDC Brooklyn, houses 1,200 inmates.
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Violence and corruption have long plagued the facility; U.S. District Judge Gary R. Brown of the Eastern District of New York wrote the detention center had “dangerous, barbaric conditions” in a recent sentencing opinion. Two inmates were stabbed to death in recent months and several correction officers have been convicted for smuggling contraband and accepting bribes.
Combs joins a list of high-profile personalities that have landed at the MDC Brooklyn, partly because the city’s other federal detention center, MDC New York, closed in 2021, also due to horrible conditions. The disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein died by suicide in his cell there in 2019. “Numerous and serious” instances of misconduct among corrections staff gave Epstein the opportunity to kill himself, a subsequent federal watchdog investigation found.
Kelly sued the federal detention center in 2022 for wrongly putting him on suicide watch after his sentencing. Kelly sought $100 million because he said the detention center knew he wasn’t suicidal after he was convicted in 2021 for racketeering and violating the Mann Act, which bars transporting people across state lines for prostitution.
Yuki Iwamura/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Former crypto billionaire Bankman-Fried survived on bread, water and sometimes peanut butter when he was in the MDC Brooklyn, his attorney said, because the detention center continued to serve him a “flesh diet” despite requests for vegan dishes.
Ja Rule stayed at the MDC Brooklyn for a brief time before being released after serving most of his two-year sentence for illegal gun possession. Most of his prison time was spent in a state prison in New York.
Sharpton served a 90-day sentence in 2001 and went on a hunger strike for protesting the U.S. Navy bombing of the island of Vieques, in Puerto Rico.
Combs was taken into custody on Monday and according to an indictment unsealed Tuesday he was charged with sex trafficking, racketeering conspiracy and transportation to engage in prostitution.
His attorney Marc Agnifilo told CBS News, “It’s impossible to prepare for a trial from where he is,” after a first federal judge denied Combs bail on Tuesday.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Robyn Tarnofsky agreed with prosecutors who argued the hip-hop mogul, who is accused of using his business empire as a criminal enterprise to conceal his alleged abuse of women, is a flight risk and poses an ongoing threat to the safety of the community.
Agnifilo said the part of the detention center where Combs is being held is “a very difficult place to be.”
contributed to this report.
