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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.
At least 11 employees were taken to hospitals and residents were urged to shelter in place on Tuesday after an explosion at a Louisville, Kentucky, business.
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services reported on social media a “hazardous materials incident” at 1901 Payne St., in Louisville. The address belongs to a facility operated by Givaudan Sense Colour, a manufacturer of food colorings for soft drinks and other products, according to officials and online records.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said emergency teams responded to the blast around 3 p.m. News outlets reported that neighbors heard what sounded like an explosion coming from the business. Overhead news video footage showed an industrial building with a large hole in its roof.
WLKY-TV
“The cause at this point of the explosion is unknown,” Greenberg said in a news conference. No one died in the explosion, he added.
Greenberg said officials spoke to employees inside the plant. “They have initially conveyed that everything was normal activity when the explosion occurred,” he said.
The Louisville Fire Department said in a post on the social platform X that multiple agencies were responding to a “large-scale incident.”
The Louisville Metro Emergency Services first urged people within a mile of the business to shelter in place, but that order was lifted in the afternoon. An evacuation order for the two surrounding blocks around the site of the explosion was still in place Tuesday afternoon.
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A rare square 37-carat emerald owned by the Aga Khan fetched nearly $9 million at auction in Geneva on Tuesday, making it the world’s most expensive green stone.
Sold by Christie’s, the Cartier diamond and emerald brooch, which can also be worn as a pendant, dethrones a piece of jewelry made by the fashion house Bulgari, which Richard Burton gave as a wedding gift to fellow actor Elizabeth Taylor, as the most precious emerald.
In 1960, Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan commissioned Cartier to set the emerald in a brooch with 20 marquise-cut diamonds for British socialite Nina Dyer, to whom he was briefly married.
Dyer then auctioned off the emerald to raise money for animals in 1969.
FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP via Getty Images
By chance that was Christie’s very first such sale in Switzerland on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the emerald finding its way back to the 110th edition this year.
It was bought by jeweler Van Cleef & Arpels before passing a few years later into the hands of Harry Winston, nicknamed the “King of Diamonds.”
“Emeralds are hot right now, and this one ticks all the boxes,” said Christie’s EMEA Head of Jewellery Max Fawcett. “…We might see an emerald of this quality come up for sale once every five or six years.”
Also set with diamonds, the previous record-holder fetched $6.5 million at an auction of part of Hollywood legend Elizabeth Taylor’s renowned jewelry collection in New York.
