Israelis woke up Thursday expecting to see the first of fifty hostages released by Hamas under an agreement approved earlier this week. Instead, they learned the hostage release would not take place at 10 a.m. as promised, and might not happen before Friday.
National Security Council Director Tzachi Hanegbi issued a statement around midnight, Wednesday into Thursday:
The contacts on the release of our hostages are advancing and continuing constantly.
The start of the release will take place according to the original agreement between the sides, and not before Friday.
It was not immediately clear what the problem was.
Israel’s Army Radio reported that Hamas itself had not yet approved the deal, which was negotiated by Qatar and the United States as intermediaries.
The Biden administration said that the delay will be small and that the agreement will still be implimented.
This is a developing story.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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