"Hussein Ibish, senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, said that approach fits Hamas’ strategy to get Israel “bogged down in the urban centers of Gaza and push them into a counterinsurgency that cannot end, which is the perpetual war Hamas says it wants.' ”
"The Aljamal family was widely respected in Gaza’s Nuseirat camp. They were known as pious and prominent members of the community. While people knew they had connections to Hamas, neighbors say no one could have guessed how deep those links truly went.
"When Israeli forces stormed the Aljamals’ building on June 8 they found Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv, hostages who had been captured from the Nova music festival on October 7, cowering in a darkened room.
"The experience of the three men – alongside that of Noa Argamani who was held in another house nearby, belonging to the Abu Nar family – echoes testimony from previously released hostages. They describe being confined among the civilian population, rather than in Hamas’ vast tunnel network under Gaza.
"In the aftermath of last month’s rescue, neighbors in Nuseirat, a refugee camp in central Gaza, told CNN they were shocked to learn that Ahmed Aljamal, a physician, and his family had kept hostages in their midst.
“ 'Had we known, had he told us, we would have taken safety precautions, hide or move to somewhere else,” one neighbor, Abu Muhammad El Tahrawi, said.
"Dr. Aljamal, 74, was a general practitioner and also led the call to prayer at the local mosque, waking early every day to get there before dawn." . . .
Israel-Hamas war: Families release photos of five female Israeli soldiers from their first days of captivity in Gaza | CNN . . ."In the pictures, Levy appears to have a badly bruised right eye. Another image shows four of the women sitting on bedding in a bare room; two of them, Gilboa and Ariev, have bandaged heads." . . .
