Israel-Hamas war: What happened on day 47?

The Israel-Hamas deal agreed on Wednesday for the freeing of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian security prisoners will be repeated later this month, a Palestinian official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that would mean a total release of 100 of the around 240 people Hamas seized during its October 7 attack in southern Israel.

In return, Israel would free a total of 300 Palestinian prisoners in the two exchanges - a number corresponding to a list of women and teenage male inmates it published on Wednesday as candidates.

As part of the current deal, which is due to begin on Thursday, Israel will pause its almost seven-week-old Gaza war to enable both the staggered recovery of the 50 hostages - all of them women or children - and entry of aid for Palestinians.

Second deal would have same conditions as first

"The second batch will follow the first batch. They would need four or five days to organize it will involve 50 Israeli (hostages) in return for 150 Palestinian (prisoners)," the Palestinian official said. He said the prisoners would include elderly, women, and children and the conditions will be the same.

Israeli officials did not immediately confirm this. But Israel has offered, in a cabinet statement, to extend the pause by a day for every additional 10 hostages handed over by Hamas.

The body of Shani Gabay, who went missing after the Hamas massacre on October 7, was found on Wednesday.

Gabay, 26, was originally from Yokneam, and the town's municipality confirmed her death.

The town's mayor, Simon Alfasi, wrote "Our Shani is gone. Our hearts are broken into pieces. We are all crying and refuse to believe, how much we waited for a different ending. 

"47 days of hope came to an end with receiving the bitter news this morning about the murder of Shani on October 7. My heart goes out to my dear parents Jacob and Michal, her brother Aviel and her sister Nitzan - who for seven weeks turned every stone and went everywhere in Israel and the world to find Shani, and fought and cried out to bring her home. We all hug the family and stand by their side. May her memory be a blessing."

Aviel told Maariv that they were "hoping for a different ending, and today we unfortunately discovered the worst ending possible. We believed for many days that she would come back, we were optimistic that there would be a happy ending. We will forever remember her joy and happiness. She was amazing and we hoped she would continue to spread her goodness in the world. She was just beginning her life and was in the middle of a law degree, which she will never finish."

Sirens sounded in Israel's southernmost city of Eilat on Wednesday amid a suspected hostile aircraft infiltration.

This is a developing story.

The Yemeni naval forces confirmed on Wednesday that their "activity targets ships flying the Israeli flag, managed by Israeli companies or owned by Israelis."

Yemeni-Houthi Naval Officer Muhammad Hussein Al-Mansour told Al-Masirah TV that the Houthi navy’s mission is to "target Zionist interests in the Red Sea - whether American or even Arab intervention on behalf of Israeli ships would make them legitimate targets of the Yemeni armed forces."

This is a developing story. 

The Israel-Hamas deal agreed on Wednesday for the freeing of 50 hostages held in Gaza in exchange for the release of 150 Palestinian security prisoners will be repeated later this month, a Palestinian official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that would mean a total release of 100 of the around 240 people Hamas seized during its Oct. 7 killing spree in southern Israel.

In return, Israel would free a total of 300 Palestinian prisoners in the two exchanges - a number corresponding to a list of women and teenage male inmates it published on Wednesday as candidates.

A part of the current deal, which is due to begin on Thursday, Israel will pause its almost seven-week-old Gaza war to enable both the staggered recovery of the 50 hostages - all of them women or children - and entry of aid for Palestinians.

"The second batch will follow the first batch. They would need four or five days to organize it will involve 50 Israeli (hostages) in return for 150 Palestinian (prisoners)," the Palestinian official said. He said the prisoners would include elderly, women, and children and the conditions will be the same.

Israeli officials did not immediately confirm this. But Israel has offered, in a cabinet statement, to extend the pause by a day for every additional 10 hostages handed over by Hamas.

The body of Shani Gabai, who went missing after the Hamas massacre on October 7, was found on Wednesday.

Gabai is originally from Yokneam, and the town's municipality confirmed her death.

This is a developing story.

Just two weeks after the war against Hamas began, the best minds in the country got together to prepare two extremely detailed documents on how to receive and treat captives physically and emotionally if and when they are released and brought home to Israel. The focus was on infants, children and teens, but most of the guidelines are relevant to adults as well. The suggested protocols were then sent to other experts for comments and online training of medical professionals and social workers was launched.   

The guidelines over tens of thousands of words can now be implemented when the children and some women are about to be freed. As Israel has never in its history been faced with such a tragic and unprecedented event of dozens of hostages of all ages being freed after weeks of suffering and neglect, the guidelines had to be composed from square one.

Those involved in the writing and those consulted by the team declined on Wednesday to be interviewed by The Jerusalem Post or other journalists on the grounds that it was too premature and that they first wanted to make sure that Hamas was in fact releasing captives and to start treating the returnees.

Terror organization Hezbollah will "respect" the temporary ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, a source in the Lebanese group told Al Jazeera on Wednesday.

As per the reported source, thus, the ceasefire in Gaza and the pause in military operations there will also apply to Southern Lebanon. There has been no Israeli confirmation of Hezbollah's claim.

Senior Hamas official Musa Abu Marzouk announced earlier that the ceasefire between the Gaza terror group and Israel will come into effect Thursday at 10:00 a.m.

An Israeli source confirmed the time to CNN later on Wednesday.

Syrian air defenses shot down an Israeli missile on Wednesday that targeted points in the Damascus countryside, Syrian media reported.

“At approximately 3:15 p.m. this afternoon, the Zionist enemy carried out an air strike with two missiles from the direction of the occupied Golan Heights, targeting some points in the vicinity of the city of Damascus,” a Syrian military source told the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

The military source added that their air defense forces "responded to the aggression, shot down one of the missiles, and the losses were limited to material losses."

Israel has allegedly targeted Iranian-proxy groups based in Syria, but the IDF rarely acknowledges strikes or other attacks in the Arab republic.

This is a developing story.

The UN Relief Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has announced that at least 191 people have been killed in the organization's schools in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of the war, according to reports by Israeli media.

In addition, about 798 people were injured, the agency reported.